Edtech

Education+tech is a thing of the past. Now investors want education minus tech

Nikhil Patwardhan

August 25, 2025 | 9 Min Read

Venture money is ditching apps and algorithms for the steady profits of real-world schools and tuition centers. The new gold rush isn’t for edtech unicorns, it’s for classrooms, communities, and credibility. Can “education minus tech” deliver what digital hype never did?

Key Takeaways

After billions of dollars went bust in edtech, investors are now eyeing the steadier, cash-generating economics of offline schools and tuition centers
PE firms are betting that brick-and-mortar education, that offers recession-proof demand, recurring fee income, and EBITDA margins of 20–30%
Scaling schools, however, comes with hard limits—real estate costs, regulatory caps, and quality issues that resist the software-style hypergrowth VCs once prized
The new gold rush in “education minus tech” could improve infrastructure and access, but risks eroding trust and affordability if investors chase profits at the expense of learning outcomes

$10 billion.

That’s how much capital poured into India’s edtech sector during its peak boom years of 2020 to 2022. To put that eye-watering number in perspective, it’s larger than the entire GDP of neighbouring Maldives and over three times what the sector raised in the previous 15 years combined. It’s also more than the total equity funding raised across all Indian startups—across sectors and stages—so far this year.

It was a staggering bet on the promise of tech-led disruption in one of India’s most underserved markets: education.

Now, hardly anyone in the venture capital world wants to talk about it.

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