← 返回

2026.09.30 | TB | Consumer | Indian Edtech & Masai School

原标题：Indian Edtech Market & Masai School – Former Senior Marketing Executive at Nolan Edutech Pvt Ltd (Masai School)

#consumer

Third Bridge · 2026-09-30

Client-led • 10 Sep 2026

Expert Former Senior Marketing Executive at Nolan Edutech Pvt Ltd (Masai School)

Agenda

Introduction

Client 1 [00:01:37]: We are looking at the Indian edtech space, focusing on education types, certifications and degree divisions. The upskilling certification segment is one of our core focuses. We understand that some online degree programmes from private universities, IITs [Indian Institutes of Technology] and IIMs [Indian Institutes of Management] are gaining popularity, with students enrolling in good numbers.

Questions

00:04:28] 2020-23 was the hottest era for doing certifications. Many Indian edtech companies were born and grew well. Now certifications aren't picking up. The growth in certifications is very limited. What would be the top 3-4 reasons for the decline of the certifications industry that edtech partners are witnessing?

Expert [00:04:59]: I think the top most reason is the fact that there was a bubble. There was a lot of tailwind, thanks to people working from home. People were looking at upskilling, one. Two, there was a surge in demand for developers, COVID forced a lot more businesses to go online and tech talent and developers were a lot more in demand so that created a second bubble. Three, mid-2022 was a time when the market was also reacting to AI coming in. I think end of 2020 is when OpenAI done their Copilot for developers, '21 is when they basically launched ChatGPT. Mid-2022, pretty much all start-ups even received memos from their investors saying, "The slowdown is coming and you extend your runway, wait and watch and see how things go." A few things happened together, which brought more of a drastic collapse than we should have seen average or normally speaking.

00:06:28] These were for certifications. I think there are many scaled and high-capital players such as Edureka, Simplilearn and Great Learning. What differentiation did Masai bring in? What was the thought process with Masai?

Expert [00:06:58]: Actually, Masai was built as a higher education company first, like skill development or higher education, you can think of rather than an edtech. The basic ask is simple people are expected to go into the job, knowing some fundamentals of, let's say, the most basic thing, building websites, products, web developers, front end or back end or full stack. Most people did not have the requisite skill. It was a very industry backward integration on what do people need to be able to do that job reasonably well on day one. What do they need to know to grow over a couple of years or so, not very deep career movements, but at least some sort of a growth potential and build backwards from there. Most of the certifications being delivered are async. They are typically recorded. Even when they are live, they will follow the idea of mostly theoretical learning, then they don't focus as much on what are the learning or the placement or the career outcomes. Certification unfortunately becomes an end in of itself because industry has asked for certifications over the decade, that became very much similar to degree. You have a degree, now you figure out the rest of it.

That's one sort of a construct difference between the two sides. It wasn't just Masai. If you see a couple of other players who have gone on to do well even now, Scaler started very similar times. NxtWave started. Both of those actually continue to run those online learning or academy businesses with a reasonable growth rate even now. They have continued to actually build up. They've also gone different ways to expand. They did not really see as much of a collapse. Masai also chose to move away from this space in the interest of scalability. Until about, I think, '24 or so, Masai was also delivering outcomes in this space. Scaler and NxtWave both continue to do so. There would be other players

00:10:04] Was there a difference in Masai's target segment vs other incumbents?

Expert [00:10:18]: Very significant difference. design went for an underserved market. It was tier 2 and tier 3 candidates. Most people, again, in education tend to take a top-down approach. The marketing is also the highest salaries, the best possible placements, etc. We took an approach of what does the average learner need and what is a good starting salary for most people. The promise was very bottom-up. The target audiences were tier 2, tier 3, what we called an underserved segment. That is how different we had gone, and it was completely open to people from all walks of education.

Client 1 [00:11:18]: Would they be studying undergraduates or working professionals?

Expert [00:11:31]: Our programmes were initially all full time until the first, I think, about 2-2.5 years. People were either graduates could not find a good enough job or any job. People were in odd jobs, they did not have a career. Let's say, somebody was doing delivery, somebody was doing call centre, somebody was doing very manual basic ops. They left their jobs to join the programme and a lot of people also came from the services aspirant side. People may have spent time trying for UPSCs, etc, and finally, there was a small segment of women returning to their career. They may have started their careers, but then they took those breaks and they wanted to get into a career again. That was the audience breakdown. There were obviously a few folks who were fresh graduates, just about to graduate engineers, but we did not for a while go after them by design.

00:12:44] One would imagine that the marketing cost would be higher because you're going at a segment which may have less awareness. What top marketing initiatives would have done to ensure marketing costs don't bloat?

Expert [00:13:11]: Actually, that's how it looks like from outside, but were probably one of the more efficient players for the longest time. In terms of the marketing costs and CAC. People are looking for career outcomes. They may not be looking for my solution. In that sense, they may not be fully aware of it. The impetus is very high once they see an opportunity that they will spend some time researching. We understood that. The second thing is we also understood that education is a lot to do with credibility, not just high-frequency awareness. Then, of course, over a period of time, digital ad was a big thing. Typically, it used to be the standard mix, Google with high-intent keywords was generally a big factor. Influencers were second big factor, followed by a mix of various display networks, some bits on Meta.

00:15:19] I noticed that for Masai, the general certification course price is INR 40,000-50,000. While for other players such as Simplilearn, it starts at INR 80,000-90,000. What's the secret sauce there? Because we are going after a certain target group, are we also trying to solve for affordability?

Expert [00:15:52]: Definitely, that has been the case for Masai from the very early days, and it continues to be the case. The customer first thinking on what works for that audience, one. Two, looking at partnerships like that. Again, a lot of the partnerships may be with institutes where their fees are also slightly more reasonable. We've again not gone after as crowded a market. Everybody is looking at one of the biggest names in that sense. I think where we started was one of the first ones was IIT Mandi and then it's expanded from there. There's a lot of people in the regions again, who will want that access and we can deliver quality skill development there. A slightly lower signalling would still help them because there's very little difference between going from here to, say, older IIT or IIM.

00:17:14] What kind of completion rates would you see for these certificates? Do different target groups result in different completion rates, success outcomes and business economics?

Expert [00:17:41]: I don't have first-hand data here, but I can tell you that. That was exceptionally high because people were very engaged and we didn't push for completion. We were actually doing gated assessments and people, if they didn't clear the assessments, they wouldn't come into placement. That was the set-up there. From what I can tell now, even though placement support is provided to candidates from most of these programmes very few are available for placements in that sense. I have an industry view of this now. From there, I can tell that it will be much closer to what the industry standard is. I don't see a significant difference in what a different certification platform vs Masai certifications will deliver in terms of completions now.

Client 1 [00:18:55]: That would be largely because there is an equilibrium regarding what learners are expecting and what curriculum is being designed. Is that right?

Expert [00:19:07]: Correct, yes. You have your regression to the mean when you look at those large markets and there's no difference in that impetus for the outlet.

00:19:22] A lot of this demand is getting fulfilled by the online degree programmes. I looked at Amity University data. It has in its online MBA programme. The same applies to NMIMS [Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies] and Symbiosis International. Many of these online degrees are gaining popularity. I think IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] Madras is also offering a four-year online bachelor's degree. How do you see this market? What key developments are happening here?

Expert [00:20:06]: The online space allows for a lot of access and affordability, so it only makes sense that it will continue to grow at a certain rate. I think the reason there was a crash. The more accurate term is the correction in that 2022-23 era is because there was a lot of tier 1 audiences who are engaging in online degrees, long-term online certificates. Tier 1 audiences will continue to engage in online learning, but that is generally very tactical supplementary, like I take a weekend course to learn something now, makes sense, but someone in NCR, Bangalore, etc, be inclined to take a long-term online course when they have offline options available? Not so much. When you compare it with people coming in from other cities who don't have that quality of access today.

People still do that because they're looking for better access and greater exposure, higher quality of learning, etc. That is where online tends to win. You're not as limited by many of the other financial constraints as well here because, again, the person can choose to move, but then that means that the costs are now 3-4x. There will be other factors which come into play. In that sense, six months, nine months, two years, four years, when you see online, I think it plays a big role. My opinion is that beyond 1-1.5 years, it again becomes harder for online because if it is fully online, then the isolation is too high. For a period of time, it tends to work. My sense is that sweet spot will be anywhere between six to 12 months, maybe 18, if you want to stretch it.

Beyond that, people will miss out when you're looking at foundational learning from four-year degrees, the traditional ones. There's a lot of social learning that happens. I don't mean social learning in the sense of peer learning about my subject. I mean you actually develop as a person. You build a lot of other aspects of your personality and being while you are there. That is very hard to do online. People are trying to replicate it with some immersions and everything, but that tends to have limited impact because extended periods of time, similar spaces, very different value. I take it that online will definitely continue to grow because it needs to serve a need in the market. One, who has, let's say, family constraints, financial constraints, typical orthodox families may not want their kids, especially in case of women leaving the city for education, don't have safety viability, don't know what will happen, etc. They definitely keep picking it up. Access for India B has been very important. That's the market where a lot of growth is happening. I wouldn't, by design, want to sell it to tier 1 and by design, I won't go for four-year degree. I'll personally be curious to see what is coming off those long-term degrees which are that remote.

Client 1 [00:25:04]: IIT Madras has been offering this programme for the past five years. This is a bachelor's degree in data science that it offers as a four-year degree. I think what we are seeing is that every year. They are starting the programme every year.

Expert [00:25:35]: Actually the counterpoint there comes in towards the signalling code. BITSoM also does the same thing. Their online degree is extremely popular. You're absolutely right. Maybe the question there just becomes about what is the best institute I am able to crack and a degree from BITSoM or an IIT Madras or any such other prestigious institute can give me a greater sense of value than a tier 2 in-person college. I think there, you're looking at the signalling code a lot more than that. Again, I'm not by any means dumping on their ability to upskill people. I'm just saying that given all the experience that I have dealing with markets and students both, if somebody were to ask me for a 3-4-year degree, I would advise them to go offline. It's not a matter of personal preference. This is where they'll have that exposure. That's what most of the degrees are, again, unfortunately. That's what I said about certificates earlier. Degrees are also goals in of themselves. You can do a checkmark saying, I have this. You can pass the ATS saying that this is an IIT person.

Then maybe you get a shot at it during the conversation. Most of the cases, the mindset is that I still have to develop most of the skills outside or on my own. Therefore, this makes sense. If I have to qualify in my previous statement, I don't see a time in the near future where any prestigious institute, any IITs, IIMs, NITs, etc, will face a lack of demand. That's something most colleges have discovered like IIM-B, executive education business itself is north.

Client 1 [00:28:04]: Is this IIM Bangalore?

Expert [00:28:06]: Yes. You look at that and you realise that how large that is and people will continue to do that. People will pay INR 1.5 lakh for a data analytics weekend programme there because it gives them that IIM signalling credential. In that sense, any time in the near future, we won't have that because the tier 2s in India in engineering, maybe there are some NITs, but honestly, the numbers are so off that from a market perspective, they're actually all tier 1. An NIT Surathkal is in gradation lower, very high quality, very prestigious. When you think of it from the market segmentation, you'll see all IITs, NITs, everything almost in a tier 1 category only. We don't really have that developed mid-rung in that sense. That's where Newton School of Technology, Polaris, SST, all of these again pick up so much. There's been a lot of chaos with some of them as well, but people will go there because they feel that they can get better career outcomes out the gate. Again, going to a Osmania University vs this doesn't feel very different to them.

Client 1 [00:29:35]: How large is this online degree space? How many annual enrolments will be across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes? What is the TAM?

Expert [00:30:36]: I would want to not take a guess because it won't be an educated enough guess. Degree, it won't be an educated guess. I think it might not be very informative and useful.

00:30:59] Do you expect a faster or better growth rate for degrees provided by top premier institutions vs private universities?

Expert [00:31:23]: Yes. If it is overall market, yes, again, because of the fact that it is not as large a market as yet in my understanding. By definition, from there, the scope for a stronger CAGR is there by itself. That's one. Two, a lot of the new players tend to go out initial days because they're trying to build their own brand and some credibility. They will push a lot on delivering some outcomes. The new age schools that I spoke about. Now the Sunstone, but again, they're offline. NIIT is mostly offline. Let me just think on this. What is it that they are actually delivering on? They are delivering the signalling. If they are new, I will assume, maybe they have a similar incentive to push for some outcomes in the initial bids, there will be buzz.

Client 1 [00:32:36]: We researched and found that IIT Jodhpur, which is one of the younger IITs, is doing a four-year online BS [Bachelor of Science] degree.

Expert [00:33:04]: That's why I was saying I think the number will grow from both perspectives.

Client 1 [00:33:14]: Is Masai the edtech partner for this programme?

Expert [00:33:21]: Masai figured out the second and the third rung of the premier institutes and that audience really well. There's a proper machinery in place now to go after these partnerships on the institute side. There's a very clear understanding of the user for these. That's something which has been rooted in the leadership from the first day, I'll go back to the same thing. The online degree numbers will increase. I think, again, when I think of it, let's say, a tier 3 person who's opting for an IIT Jodhpur degree, what is their mindset, at least it's an IIT compared to a university that I have not heard of, etc. That's one of the ways that a lot of these IITs are being opened up even offline. The early years, most of them, IITs and baby IIMs, they've not delivered the level of exposure, education or quality, but they have a lot of leeway because that name carries them through for a while and people come in just with the name.

When it is these kinds of names, I think they will probably see immense growth because the other option for people here will be to look at a very, very low-rung tier 3 college in their local cities or towns or relocate for a tier 2 college at best, whereas this allows them a lot more flexibility in choice with very little added risk. How this calculation is being done for the user is? There's very little added risk. I am doing this irrespective, I get a recognised degree. I know the IIT name is not going to go away 20 years down the line as well. That will work, there will be growth for that. If you look at the traditional colleges, the tier 2s and tier 3s, some of the colleges have no infrastructure. If you go to Bangalore, Delhi, Bombay, some of them are opened up set-ups which would be standalone apartments. I've seen that in places in Noida and all myself as well. They still run. The fact that they are still able to basically sell that out is because people are very, very hungry for this.

The idea that a person has on the other side that I'll have some prestige if I get an engineering degree or any other thing that people value now is massive. That's why people go for any and all institutes. From that market, I would imagine this is something which should see 10x growth in 10 years, if I have to give you my sense from the numbers that you are telling me. It also gives me a clear enough sense that the market is going more in that direction, especially if IIT Jodhpur is seeing these enrolments. IIT Madras has had an online education wing as one of the first IITs. Their data science programme is extremely well known, very well respected as well. Those numbers definitely don't surprise me. It's the same story with an IIM-B. Their executive ed programmes have been, I think, probably stronger than A and C. It's a function of somebody making those choices there. Then at the very low end one, that's a clear enough signal. If education is seeing, I don't know, 15-18% CAGR, this is likely to see a 25%, that's what I would guess.

00:38:13] If you look at certifications, people had job expectations, jobs vanished, the market corrected, and a flash collapse occurred. Let's say people pursuing an IIT Madras degree have certain expectations because it's an IIT tag. We know that you cannot offer jobs or outcomes in the same ratio. 1,000-10,000 students are coming in every year. If you're taking 1,000 students online in one programme, you can't deliver the same. The students' capabilities will be different as well. What's the risk of this going down the same route as certification, where people do this for 3-4 years, then realise it's not useful and life comes back to circle?

Expert [00:39:24]: Much lesser. Also, I'd use the word correction rather than that collapse, I think, which I said earlier as well with certifications also because, again, if you see right now, upskilling for working professionals is probably at a peak again because there are so many changes and so much new technology, new tools to learn. The inflated demand is what had collapsed, and therefore, we saw it as a collapse.

It's something which work in our ecosystem because people still need that degree. They'll still need some access, and they would rather take it from someone who is delivering some parts of that quality because otherwise, we look at it what are the alternate options. It would collapse if we were to say that the degree construct has started to fail and people are now actually evaluating the quality of their degree in some way, shape or form. That would require some skill assessment, a much deeper assessment. That doesn't happen at the gate. That reality check happens when you are actually entering the market. That's not the narrative anywhere. I follow on the business side also, Jetri Dialogs, which is run by Pramath, Shreyasi, etc, all the folks who ran Harappa and then Ashoka and all. They're building a lot of universities and where they've done a session on outcomes.

They were talking about outcomes are not just career outcomes. That's a very transactional way of looking at it, which is in fact true. Is it true for the user who's come only for the career outcome? Probably not. When you look at the design of education, the career outcome or whatever, the placement outcome, career outcome is also something which is over a longer period of time. The placement outcome is something which is one part of it. What are the research papers that you are putting in? What work that you do in academia? What kind of higher education do you go for? What start-ups are coming out of it and jobs? These are indicators of a very good academic institute. What will happen is that a tier 2 or a tier 3 college will easily hide behind these. They will claim a lot of these things and say placements are like this only, and they get away with it. In that sense, I think I don't see a collapse in the education system unless some fundamental construct changes. I imagine it will be very hard because there has been Silicon Valley leaders who have said skills over degrees for the last decade now.

The degree and eventually the percentages are a surrogate for my skill, my quality, my rigour and a bunch of things like that. There are companies who still look at school percentages and college percentages because that's a surrogate for consistent effort and consistently delivering a high bar of results. Now, for them to test it is a very costly exercise. Therefore, they will keep looking at it. In a market like India, where you can play the numbers game and say that I still have a lot of people to apply for anything. It doesn't matter. Even the jobs work a lot more like test prep in that sense because you create a difficult enough test, people will jump through hoops to try and crack it. That's why the filtering on these pieces work. I don't imagine this to have a crash. Again, if there is mis-selling happening and if there are inflated numbers because they've tapped into something which is completely unsustainable, I wouldn't have a first-hand view of that. There is a definite correction possible in anything like that. Outside of that correction, there's no logical reason that I see for these degrees to suffer more than, say, again, any other tier 3 college doing that offline.

00:45:38] Ultimately, everybody expects a certain success ratio. Consider the certifications targeted towards working professionals and degrees, let's say, an MBA [Master of Business Administration] or an undergraduate degree. How would you contrast the success ratio, or the minimum success ratio below which the programme can or cannot work?

Expert [00:46:22]: If you go to an MBA vs a typical UG degree, BS, BSc, BTech, etc, again, there's a slight difference. MBAs have thrived with the part-time executive and distance learning set-up for a couple of decades now, really well in India because MBAs, again, they signal a slightly different thing and a lot of corporates have a policy that we will only hire for these roles if you have an MBA. Therefore, that qualifier gets people through the gate. The cliff there from a tier 1 MBA to tier 2 MBA and subsequently all online distance learning, etc, programmes is very high. Tier 1 MBAs delivers incredible outcomes and then there is a long tail after a significant cliff. That market is slightly different because your primary degree is already done. Then this is on top of it. Now when you look at the foundational degree, any undergrad, I think that is a little different because, again, like I said, if I have to put my money on it, my money would go more into offline education as compared to online degrees over four years or so. I think they are missing so many things that it's very hard.

One little distinction there. Now, certifications for working professionals, again, come in with a slightly different qualifier that when I spend, say, INR 50,000-1 lakh on a certification, I'm doing it as a good to have. I am not necessarily bothered by the outcomes of it as much and again, when I'm saying I, I don't mean me personally only. I actually have rarely bothered with any certification as an individual. I know that around me, it gives a sense of accomplishment and pride to people and they are willing to pay for that. The fact that you are in the mix, you're doing something and even if it doesn't move the needle on any significant metric, your current job or a future job, people continue to take that because it's a good-to-have and their income is slightly more disposable there. When you think of this, the criticality of it is much higher. The lifting that it has to do over a period of my career is much greater. This is something which will stay with me as a student or an eventual professional pretty much forever. Therefore, the criticality is much higher. I would go back and compare it with the other options that this person has.

I know you're looking at it as a market-first view, but when you think of it from the user perspective, which is what will define the market and therefore, the businesses that you're evaluating, they'll come down to the options that this person has on their table outside of these degrees. When you compare there, a lot of them can win because, again, an IIT can open up one tomorrow in some small town somewhere. It will still have more credibility than another private institute, which has been running for many, many years. One of the other things is when we move to tier 2, tier 3 India, the value of that brand is a lot greater. We've seen this, there's a lot of debunking of mainline brands outside of education, if I say, like FMCG, etc, in the last couple of years, that whole movement of Label Padhega India and all that. People are realising, "Hey, I was trusting this brand, but it is not to be trusted." We are forced to see that we thought we were making educated choices, but we are also moving brand first. Tier 2s and tier 3s, this education and access are both much lesser. Therefore, the indexing on a brand and the signal of that brand is much, much greater. When you see it from that perspective, I don't see this breaking so easily as compared to the other markets that we are talking about.

00:51:10] Let's say IIT Madras offered the BS degree online but didn't have any partner such as Masai. In IIT Jodhpur, there are Futurense and Masai. As these institutes are of national importance, would IITs or IIMs [Indian Institutes of Management] even need a partner to launch these programmes? IIT Madras has shown that it doesn't need one.

Expert [00:51:49]: If I look at it from the IIT's perspective, they don't necessarily need a partner. They can probably go out and build it, but will they have those kind of access and resources in the initial days? Probably not necessarily. What this allows them to do is they have very healthy profit, revenue share margins in these kinds of contracts. Even if a player who's selling it on their behalf is very good, very aggressive, they're not getting more of the revenue, and that's the best case scenario. I don't want to demean anybody, but this is a channel partner business. An institute like Masai is able to access lakhs of learners already because you have the aggregation of the Patnas and the Jodhpurs and the Mandis and everything else, and they even have IIMs and they even have other certificates. Fundamentally, it's a question of e-commerce vs D2C in this universe in that sense.

There will be that direct-to-consumer module, which all of them will be able to do, and that's why they have that as well. To scale it on their own, while the market is growing and catching the wave as they would want to, would be very hard on their own and therefore, they will always be happy to partner. Premier institutes across the globe do this for a part of their business. There will always be value to something like this to a certain extent. If it is too lopsided. The more of these white spaces, they can figure out as a Masai or any other player like this, they'll definitely have a benefit from it. Like I said, the Masai idea has been to figure out machinery for something before trying to double down on it. This is the partnership's playbook and the marketing playbook to acquire customers at a lower cost coming into play. Those are the two things which I feel will help them win.

00:55:05] The IITs' and IIMs' brand draws people, whether it's cycle signalling or credentialing. How much value will the channel partner accrue in the long term? Let's say, in the initial days, IITs need these partners to get these programmes enough space. Ultimately, 2-3 years into the journey or the programme, why should there be any money left on the table for a channel partner to work? What are they bringing to the table?

Expert [00:55:44]: From a future view, we can always learn from other markets. Channel partners work very well in education over the years, but I'll take a look at the other market. Real estate works on channel partners, FMCG works on middle layers. Nobody has been able to get rid of them. I don't think they try to get rid of them because the cost of doing it yourself, markets find their own efficiencies. What happens is where the channel partners may have been making very, very significant margins at one point. They're probably more commoditised in real estate. Therefore, the margins are lower, the entry for a new channel partner is not as lucrative, but it still continues to work on that. Now within education also, this is something which has been working for a while. There are courses which have been curated by players like a Jaro or an UpGrad, Simplilearn, etc, who will continue to do that. If we take that reductionist logic, saying that eventually I can, most businesses should be able to do that. In reality, most businesses never do, whether it is in education or outside.

I was looking at an upskilling programme from IIMA, which is delivered by VCNow. I had to look at what is VCNow and why do they still exist? Why is it that there is a separate party? Same question, but continues to be delivered that way. Most of the programmes in these spaces are delivered by someone. They don't want the hassle. They have not built their teams like that. To build an online and offline business in the same place, you need that different infrastructure as an institute as well. Do they have the ability to and then do they want to? The combination of those two things is going to be rare. A few people will. IIT Madras, they would have seen something come inside early days that they moved into this space. Even after that, let's look at all the other players, what is it that they are doing. They're sitting on a similar opportunity, but they don't because the administration doesn't want to or can't be bothered with something on those lines.

00:58:38] Typically, multiple partners come in. Barriers to entry are very low. Let's say programmes are successful. The IITs and IIMs need partners. At the individual channel partner level, does it become an attractive business at all? The competitive intensity will be very high, always putting pressure on the margins you can get from the universities. Does it become a fight to the bottom?

Expert [00:59:14]: Possibly. That's why I said it will become commoditised, if not now over a period of time because if it is very lucrative, it will attract more players. Wherever there's an opportunity to be made money, the other players will walk in. It will become the classical red ocean. That, again, does not mean that somebody can't be profitable. It's just that the market is not necessarily as clean or as lucrative as it once was. That's the thing. Typically, when it happens, then either it will be a fragmentation and there will be a lot of people doing that. In education, that seems slightly unlikely. I suspect it will still be some form of aggregation only because the thing is that delivering that quality is still a lot to do with this. That's why I was saying like, a channel partner is functionally, it's not a direct equivalent. That's a term I'm using to draw on that example because they still have to deliver the learning experience. They are still taking care of the ops.

A channel partner in its pure terms, just facilitates that transaction, which may be the primary value here to the institution. When you look at the learner, they need a lot more from that person. They don't look at it that a "Masai or a Simplilearn or whatever else facilitated a transaction, got me there. Now I don't care about it." Every bit of their experience actually hinges on what the partner is doing there and how that experience is being delivered, what additional things are they doing on top of it. There would still be at the very least a service layer, if not other qualitative piece. Yes, I don't think it is something which can or will be eradicated as a layer just because someone else can do it. To be clear, my personal point of view of the market and my personal preferences are too different in here.