Education Industry Analysis

India’s education sector offers a great opportunity with approximately 29 per cent of India’s population being between the age group of 0-14 years. India’s higher education segment is is expected to increase to US$ 35.03 billion by 2025. The education sector in India is estimated at US$ 91.7 billion in FY18 and is expected to reach US$ 101.1 billion in FY19. As of December 2018, internet penetration in India had reached 46.13 per cent. Increasing internet penetration will help in education delivery.

India has over 250 million school going students, more than any other country. It also has one of the largest networks of higher education institutions in the world. Number of colleges and universities in India reached 39,050 and 903, respectively in 2017-18. India had 36.64 million students enrolled in higher education in 2017-18. Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education reached 25.8 per cent in 2017-18. In December 2018, the government of India published that 3.43 million candidates had enrolled in the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 2016-20 scheme. Up to January 24, 2019 as many as 2.52 million candidates were trained under under the scheme’s Short Term Training (STT).

The Central Government plans to disburse US$ 1 billion to states for introducing skill development initiatives. In November 2016, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship launched Pradhan Mantri YUVA Yojana, at a cost of US$ 74.68 million for providing entrepreneurship education and training to students in the country. Skill India Mission 2015 aims at skilling 400 million Indian youths by 2022. As of December 2018, there were 15,044 Industrial Training Institutes in the India. In October 2017, in order to boost the Skill India mission, two new schemes, SANKALP and STRIVE were launched with an outlay of Rs 6,655 crore (US$ 1.02 billion). Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE) by 2022 was announced in union budget 2018-19 with an outlay of Rs 1 lakh crore (US$ 15.44 billion) for four years. Skill India program has benefitted more than one crore (10 million) youth annually.

Education sector in India remains to be a strategic priority of the government. The Government of India has allowed 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the education sector through the automatic route since 2002.The sector has received cumulative FDI worth US$ 2.21 billion up to December 2018. Indian education sector witnessed 18 merger and acquisition deals worth US$ 49 million in 2017. In May 2018, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India launched Samagra Siksha scheme with the aim of achieving holistic development of school education in the country. The Government of India is working on the draft of the New Education Policy to address the changing dynamics in the education industry of the country as per the requirement of the population. According to Mr Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Human Resource Development, Government of India, New National Education Policy draft is ready and would be given to the central government.