EdTech And The Indian Job Landscape

By Ms Shveta Raina

Founder and CEO - Talerang

The Indian edtech market was already growing before the pandemic hit, however, with the coronavirus, the sector’s growth accelerated at a significant pace. Even in the present times, the sector is booming and is expected to have a promising future. As per Statista, the Indian ed-tech segment was valued at $2.8 billion last year and is projected to leapfrog and hit the $10.4 billion mark by the end of 2025. In fact, with its widespread acceptance both across the customer base and the investor circles, ed-tech is now a mainstream sector of the economy. It should come as no surprise then that the impact is also trickling into the job market and changing the hiring landscape of the country. But has this digital transformation of the education space also brought about changes to the Indian workplace? Yes, in multiple ways!

Education, but not just educators

Ed-tech platforms have also played a major role in generating various career opportunities. Given the dependence on technological advancement, constant ideation, and development, a career in the edtech space requires young talent with leadership skills. Unlike earlier, when one had to be an educator to be in the education sector, new-age edtech companies don’t have the same entry barriers. From growing their sales force, marketing armies to their content and social media teams, they are on the lookout for people interested in shaping the Indian education framework. A graphic designer and a teacher now work together with an app developer to make a basic maths lesson an adventure for a student. All our welcome - if this is not an interesting development, then what is?

Hiring spree for sales, sales, sales

A key driver of the edtech boom in India has been the exponential growth of the armies of salespeople that the big edtech firms have been hiring. The salesforce of each of these companies has an uphill task. This is where unconventional sales strategies come into place, along with attractive incentives to inspire employees to constantly sell the products. Despite the hard-sell tactics, rigorous client profiling, and unattainable targets, the edtech start-ups seem to be making up for it all with glamorous signing bonuses and commission-based salary packages, and too good to ignore deals that have people flocking to join the edtech sales revolution. Several companies have added an on-field sales force to their existing online sales team.

Building futuristic teams

Edtech has ushered in an era where new job roles are created at an unprecedented speed. Various new-age roles such as career mentors, virtual lab instructors, student engagement executives, concept artists, parent relationship managers are now getting mainstream acceptance. Apart from these, creative and technical job roles such as content creators, academicians, app developers, technical architects, program managers, coding experts, cloud infrastructure managers, machine-learning engineers have also gained prominence and are considered to be viable career avenues. That is yet another beauty of the space, it is bringing in new adventures while also being heavily reliant on the traditional skills that the current workforce possesses. New, but in tandem with the old - meaning game-changers are seen in hoards. 

Bridging the skills gap 

Apart from creating employment opportunities, the ed-tech segment is also playing a pivotal role in bridging the skills gap that exists in the market. The ed-tech companies are well aware that in this ever-evolving world, tech-savvy talent will have a competitive edge in the market. Hence, they are helping in making students future-ready by offering them high-end educational experiences in the up-and-coming fields that will rule our future. They have an ever-evolving collection of curated specialized courses across disciplines that are also appealing to the current workforce. Up skilling is now so easy, that we should be ready to see a lot more career switches in the near future and the years to come. Certain skill-based education courses have improved the hiring space by creating a pipeline of work-ready talent.

In conclusion

While the Indian edtech sector has generated thousands of employment opportunities, it has also paved the way for the upskilling and reskilling of our current workforce. An employee of one edtech firm may very well be a customer of another. The edtech wave is a force to reckon with - to think that only a smartphone and an internet connection can equip people to change their careers, or climb up the ladder in their current career paths, is a complete game-changer.