After payments to Uber and phone bills, you may soon be able to pay for school fees, apply for education loans and buy your child’s school uniform on India’s technology Unicorn Paytm.
The decision to move into education may be a suitable one as the Indian education sector is expected to reach one hundred and eighty billion USD by 2020.
Given that India has the largest population between six and sixteen, digital learning will spike considerably. Paytm, which hopes to capitalise this market will be setting up a vertical called “Patym Education.”
Paytm Education
During the school admission process, there are several tedious formalities, which is task intensive for the schools. Paytm aims to target these “outsource-able” activities from schools, including fee collection.
Paytm hopes to onboard twenty thousand schools, one thousand higher education institutes and another one thousand coaching institutions in the next two years. They estimate the number of users through this vertical to reach thirty-five thousand.
They also intend to broaden the horizon by offering child insurance plans to parents and education loans for higher studies.
Paytm Mall will offer school uniforms and stationery, which will be home delivered for students.
Challenges for Paytm
Paytm took the Indian e-commerce by storm by relying heavily on discounts and cashback options. Will Paytm use a similar strategy in the education sector?
More importantly, will such a strategy work in this sector? As education is something that is viewed very critically by the target audience for this service, would they choose an institution over another just because of a cashback offer? It would be interesting to see how Paytm handles its strategy in this sector.
Regulatory constraints would be another challenge for Paytm as the value of transactions would be significantly higher in fee payments.
