| |19 SEPTEMBER 2018HIGHERReview| |23 SEPTEMBER 2018HIGHERReviewThe good thing is that the trends from India ­ not just the metro cities but also the tier 2 and tier 3 cities ­ are very encouraging from this per-spective. It is believed that by 2020, there will be roughly 10 million dig-itally educated students and working professionals in India. Compare that with about a million in 2015 and you will know the scale at which digital education is catching up in India. The market size is expected to be about 2 billion US dollars in comparison with a non-existent market in 2015. Growth of the mobile smart-phones and high data rate internet bandwidth at affordable prices are the two most critical reasons for the growth of digital education in In-dia. It is amazing as to how the rise of technology has a very strong cor-relation with the rising aspirations of the Indian semi-urban and rural youth. Digital education is more em-braced in the interiors of India ­the tier 2 and tier 3 cities ­ because stu-dents there have higher aspirations in life. They are no longer content with what their parents had. They want to conquer the world with their skills & knowledge. Unfortunately, these students have so far been disconnect-ed from the metropolitan high-value education and had to settle for what was available.With digital learning platforms, this is no longer true. The semi-ur-ban and rural students now have ac-cess to the best possible teachers and the best possible learning content. They can now aspire to compete with the best in the world (not just India) from their hometowns. This is one of the biggest trends we see in India over the last decade. More and more semi-urban and rural students are getting acknowledged for their skills and knowledge. This, according to me, is the biggest impact on digital education and digital learning plat-forms can have on India, as India pro-gresses towards a digital economy.What this means is that students from all over India have access to the best educational content, the best teachers, and the best teaching insti-tutes. And as we move towards 2020, we will start seeing this translate into a higher number of jobs for students and more meaningful education.It is believed that by 2020, there will be roughly 10 million digitally educated students and working professionals in India
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