EdTech started the last decade with $500m of Venture Capital investments in 2010 and finished 14x higher at $7B in 2019. Through COVID, EdTech attracted $4.5B of VC through the first half of 2020, setting the sector up for a record setting full year.
The first half of 2020 was, dare we use the phrase, ‘Unprecedented’. Education Technology is accelerating everywhere as parents, institutions, enterprises and governments look for new ways to connect, engage and support literally billions of isolated learners from early childhood to adult re-skilling alike.
$4.5B of Venture Capital was invested in EdTech players globally over the first six months of 2020, setting up the sector for a potentially record-breaking full year.
Global EdTech Venture Capital will nearly triple over the next decade. Asia (Ex China), Latin America and Africa will see much higher investment over the next 5 years.
EdTech started the last decade with $500M of Venture Capital investments in 2010 and finished 14x higher at $7B in 2019, down 18% off a 2018 high of $8.5B in VC funding. China made up 52% of the last decade’s EdTech VC funding, the US represents 33% followed by Europe, India and the Rest of the World, each investing about 5% of the global funding total.
Emerging Markets such as Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia are growing rapidly and have large under-served populations looking to leapfrog traditional developed education systems to lower cost and improve access and outcomes, supporting learners, teachers and administrators with advanced technology. On current trends the early half of this decade will see a continuation of growth funding for Indian EdTech, followed in the latter half of the decade by investment traction in large emerging markets, particularly Southeast Asia and Latin America, where multi-billion dollar funds are being set up to deploy capital into education and other impact sectors.
COVID-19 is also highlighting inequality in access to digital and remote learning solutions, especially in an environment where synchronous video and laptop-based applications have been the emergency response, more so in developed economies. Developing economies and emerging markets are more broadly seeing surging levels of mobile and internet access and overwhelming demand for stronger education to employment links. In response to the tragic and sudden circumstances COVID-19 has brought about, confounded by global inequality, access and cost issues, we expect EdTech to be a fast but bumpy ride through the rest of 2020 whilst bringing an exciting opportunity to help develop a more affordable, equitable, impactful and resilient education economy.
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