The NEET fiasco shows why edtechs must now pay close attention to the results

Good morning (%first_name |Dear Reader%),

Welcome to a brand new week. Let’s jump right in.

My Google alert for “Indian edtech” went off several times last week. Before I clicked on the notifications, I wondered if they were new funding announcements. Instead, I discovered that edtechs were fighting another battle for their credibility.

It seems that the more edtech companies focus on central competitive exams in India, the more they have to fight to stay relevant.

“Face value” is a thing of the past

Edutap, a test preparation company, is under the radar of the Central Consumer Protection Authority, which has fined it 3 lakh rupees ($3,600) for displaying “misleading” advertisements.

The company caters to a diverse group of banking exam candidates looking to clear their exams for positions in SEBI, NABARD, RBI and its style closely resembles a wide range of test preparation professionals in the market. The pattern is the same: watch on YouTube → buy a course → take advantage of coaching → leave. The Edutap website even offers a graduated selection of spa-like preparation packages. The “gold” package includes more preparatory interviews than the “silver” package.

The shampoo-sachet marketing technique has always been inappropriate for the edtech industry, as if access to knowledge could be broken down into small, digestible pieces. This transforms students into customers who can access information at a level commensurate with what they are willing to pay.

The flip side of this, of course, is that the learning customer will demand that the product works in order for their ratings to increase and for them to achieve the desired rank. Here, edtechs know they can’t keep their end of the bargain. They have no influence on what happens on the day of the exam. They can’t even control how much consumers use their product when preparing for the exam. They cannot deliver what they promised.

But that doesn’t stop edtech companies from advertising it brought results.

“CCPA discovered that Edu Tap advertisements displayed the names and photos of 144 candidates purportedly selected for the prestigious RBI exam, but did not mention what specific courses these students had enrolled in. Importantly, 57 of these candidates only took the ‘Interview Tips Course’, which is offered free of charge after completing the basic exam stages.

(…)

Additionally, there has been unauthorized use of the RBI emblem in advertisements to create a false sense of credibility. As approximately 2 to 2.5 lakh students appear for the RBI Class B exam every year, the CCPA has highlighted the significant risk of misleading such a large group of vulnerable candidates.”

When edtechs offer courses in pod form, students as consumers will try all of them. They can pay for some of these courses, they can Google the rest of the information. This makes it impossible to link a specific course to specific results.

For the most part, educational technology companies – and previously physics test preparation companies – can get away with claiming that their courses are what helped their students score high in tough competitive exams.

Which can lead to funny mistakes like these:

These insightful memes were funny and harmless in the golden age of edtech. It’s completely different now. The disciples have become wiser. VCs have proven their worth. The competition is so fragmented and aggressive that it is impossible to maintain your niche for very long.

Edtechs must now be held to better standards, even if they don’t quite meet them. Which means you can’t just paste your face into a collared shirt and call it an ad. (On a side note, I miss you Wolf Gupta era.