The Storm: Education’s Digital Disruption (Part 2)

This is the second part of the series of “EdTech in India: A Journey of Promise, Disruption, and Discovery”

Two opposing realities confront us today:

1. Edtech roared and soared during COVID. And most people thought that the COVID-19 pandemic gave Indian EdTech the push it needed for the longest time.
2. But today, edtech is quiet. Very quiet. Apart from a few, nobody talks about it. If we dwell deeper, we see that the edtech companies that survived were either founded much before COVID or came into existence after the second wave.

What happened between these two realities? The story lies not in the statistics, but in the homes and hearts of those who lived through the Covid storm.

The first article in this series talks about Indian EdTech’s early days. The next two articles try to explain why the above two realities, simultaneously exist, almost as if in a parallel universe. Data is everywhere, but numbers don’t tell the whole story. This story is about the people behind the numbers—what they feel, why they feel, and why numbers look the way they do.

The Storm

The first wave of COVID-19 didn’t just close schools. It shattered our entire understanding of how education could and should work. Overnight, that lonely desktop in the corner became insufficient. Schools scrambled to move online, teachers—some who had never needed to use more than a blackboard in decades—rushed to learn video conferencing tools, and parents found themselves becoming part-time IT support specialists.

The Struggle

Let’s paint a picture of what happened inside homes during those pandemic days. Since the experience of the pandemic was different to different people, and India is a vast country, let’s just look at a family of four in an urban city—perhaps a mother, a father, and their children.

The mother—cooking three meals a day with minimal help, juggling multiple loads of laundry, sweeping, mopping, and washing endless cups of tea and coffee for the household. If she was also working, that meant extra pressure.

The father—taking work calls from a makeshift study set up in a corner of the house, sometimes the bedroom, occasionally next to the kitchen, or wherever a charging point was available, while also trying to contribute to household chores.

The TV was constantly on, and phones were always beeping, with news about COVID spreading fear. Parents tried to keep their families safe without fully knowing what to do.

For teachers, everything they knew about teaching was built on human connection, now reduced to endless “Can you hear me?” queries and blank screens. “How do I know if my students understand when half the screens are blank and the other half is frozen?” teachers found themselves asking. The art of teaching, similar to theatre, built on reading facial expressions and body language, was reduced to uncertainty.

Coordinators and Principals, once actively present in bustling corridors and peeping through classrooms trying to gauge the teaching levels and pitch in when needed, found themselves struggling to support their staff effectively.

Students, especially younger ones, faced their battles. No playing with friends, no physical exercise. While they initially enjoyed the novelty of screens and online games, headaches and fatigue soon followed – and unfortunately, children were not able to communicate it. And let’s be honest—being around parents 24/7 isn’t exactly fun for slightly older kids.

Even working professionals, who typically dreaded training sessions, found themselves missing those breaks from routine. The chance to step away from work, interact with new people, and experience something different had vanished. However remote work had one silver lining—more time with family.

WhatsApp became the thread holding education together—mothers’ groups buzzed with updates, students formed study groups, principals checked in with teachers, and teachers constantly messaged children and parents. What was once a structured 9-to-5 workday extended into late evenings and nights – Nobody wanted to be thought of as not working enough. The “always-on” culture had begun.

The Great Dream

But while homes struggled with this new reality, a grander vision was taking shape outside. The chaos of adapting to online education sparked dreams of a complete educational transformation. Everyone—from venture capitalists to education experts, consultants to school owners, tech giants to governments—believed they were witnessing the birth of Education 2.0.

• The End of Traditional Classrooms

The physical classroom would become obsolete, they said. Learning would happen anywhere, anytime. Children would learn at their own pace, free from the constraints of fixed schedules and standardized curricula. Parents worldwide began to wonder: Would their children ever need to return to physical schools?

• The Rise of the AI Teacher

Artificial Intelligence would personalize education for every child. Learning algorithms would understand each student’s pace, style, and preferences better than human teachers ever could. Every child would have a private tutor, available 24/7, powered by sophisticated algorithms.

• A Global Educational Marketplace

Geographic boundaries wouldn’t matter. A student in rural India could attend lectures from top lecturers in the country. A fantastic Indian teacher in India could reach American students. Education would become democratized. Billions were poured into these visions considered as the future of learning.

• The Death of Textbooks

Interactive content would replace static textbooks. Why read about photosynthesis when you could watch it happen in 3D? Why memorize historical dates when you could experience virtual reality reconstructions of historical events? Publishers rushed to digitize content, and QR codes began appearing in all information sources, believing paper books would soon be relics.

• The Promise of Data

Everything would be measurable. Learning gaps would be identified instantly. Progress would be tracked in real-time. Parents would know exactly how their child was performing, without waiting for report cards and PTMs. Education would become a science of precision, they said.

• The Luxury of Continuous Learning

A whole new economy would emerge around digital education. Everything and anything could be taught from anywhere, giving rise to business models unimaginable till now. Teaching would become a highly scalable profession. Everyone would want to learn.

The Gold Rush

The Great Dream reached a fever pitch. India’s massive young population, coupled with limited educational infrastructure, seemed perfect for this digital revolution. The euphoria was contagious. Edtech valuations soared. Capital kept pouring in. Traditional educators who expressed doubts were dismissed as resistant to change. Parents who questioned the all-digital approach were seen as old-fashioned. The world wasn’t just optimistic about edtech—it was certain that education had changed forever.

The underlying belief was – “There is no going back—education has changed forever. With everything online, learning can finally be tracked, measured, and improved in real time. We don’t need to wait for years to see the impact of teaching.

Little did we know that four years hence, reality would tell a different story…  

Because the fundamentals of good education, like preventive healthcare, don’t follow trends. For centuries, what is good and what is bad for humans and their development, has always stayed the same. It is only our belief that wavers.

[To be continued in Part 3: Building Bridges: Technology and Traditions