When the COVID-19 pandemic closed 1.5 million schools in India, impacting almost 250 million students, online learning did not appear to be just an answer but a turning point in history. For the very first time, talk of “Digital India” in education was no longer wishful talk; it was a requirement. But five years down the line, that urgency is gone, and so is much of the optimism. The implosion of India’s private EdTech bubble is more than just a market correction. It is a mirror held to the uneven, sometimes exclusionary, bases of India’s digital transformation.
The Rise of a New Education Order
Between 2020 and 2022, India’s EdTech industry will become the second largest in the world. Platforms like Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, and PhysicsWallah promised to democratize learning through technology. The narrative was seductive: students from any background could access world-class lessons through a mobile phone. The promise was scale, affordability, and meritocracy rolled into one sleek interface.
Investors reacted positively. Indian EdTech startups, based on Tracxn data, Byju’s and Unacademy combined raised more than four billion dollars in 2021 alone. Byju’s valuation hit twenty-two billion dollars, Unacademy’s more than three billion. Growth in the sector was being celebrated repeatedly as the ideal synergy between the Digital India initiative and the efficiency of the private sector.
But behind the exponential growth graphs, the numbers hid a more nuanced reality. Based on the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, just 28 percent of children in rural India had access to a smartphone that they could use for schoolwork. In 2023, its own digital learning survey by the Ministry of Education revealed that more than 60 percent of schools in rural areas did not have consistent internet connectivity. The boom for digital learning, thus, was unevenly felt, focused among urban and wealthier households.
The Inclusion Paradox
A 2022 UNICEF survey reported that close to 70 percent of rural students suffered major learning loss because of limited access to devices and stable connections. Even where access was available online, learning outcomes were divergent. An 2022 UNICEF survey paper showed that barely one out of every ten students were able to finish assignments regularly during online school, while girls’ dropout rates in poor families increased exponentially due to added domestic chores.
The social effects were significant. The classroom, where students previously shared identity and resources, was splintered into millions of separate screens. Education — a communal experience — was made individual and commercial. The EdTech paradigm, as innovative as it was, was mostly built for the privileged who were already able to pay for private tuitions.
The Fall of the Titans
By 2023, the bubble had burst. Investor optimism collapsed as profitability eluded them. Byju’s was hit with several lawsuits, large-scale layoffs, and valuation reductions. Unacademy reduced its K-12 segment. Dozens of tiny startups either folded or shifted to niche skill-based education.
Why this sudden about-face? The reason is both structural overreach and conceptual mismatch. The sector mixed up access with equity. It believed that digital delivery equated to the quality of education. But the Indian education ecosystem is not a content issue; it is an infrastructure issue. Without electricity, internet, and teacher facilitation, content sits idle.
Further, the subscription-based model was by nature exclusionary. For households that earn below ₹10,000 per month — virtually 30 percent of India’s population — even a ₹500 monthly charge is out of reach. Most were mis-sold loans to cover the cost of premium courses, which resulted in widespread criticism. The failure of this model proves that digital education cannot sustain itself on consumer logic in a nation where education is still a social good and not a marketable commodity.
The Government’s Reorientation
While private EdTech struggled, the government revised its own digital education plan. Initiatives such as DIKSHA, PM eVidya, and SWAYAM have proceeded to expand reach into 30 regional languages, providing free, open educational materials. The Ministry of Education says that DIKSHA now supports more than 1.5 lakh digital learning contents and reaches 150 million users every year.
This digital rebalancing is not only technological but also social. It responds to the issue of digital equity – making sure that access to learning platforms is not a function of geography, income level, or sex. But even this solution has its challenges: lack of consistent device availability, poor digital literacy among teachers, and inadequate infrastructure continue as recurring bottlenecks.
Lessons for the Future
India’s EdTech leviathans’ decline and Digital India’s uneven success in its education mission collectively provide a critical insight: technology cannot replace the human system of learning. To work, digital education will have to fold in three layers: infrastructure, pedagogy, and equity.
The second phase of Digital India’s education program must thus be concerned not with apps, but with access. Tribal language content creation, community Wi-Fi zones, and rural digital hubs are not add-ons to the periphery — they are the essence of education inclusion. Without them, the digital promise is a metropolitan entitlement.
India’s foray into EdTech was ambitious, even visionary. But as it falls back, it leaves us with an important reminder: in education as in democracy, scale is nothing without access, and access is nothing without equity.
If Digital India must live up to its social contract, then the next child who goes online from a rural hamlet has to do so not as a consumer, but as a citizen — entitled, empowered, and included.
Clear Cut Education Desk
New Delhi, UPDATED: Oct 31, 2025 11:41 IST
Written By: Janmojaya Barik
