The downfall of edtech startups can be chalked up to this—a sharp growth in numbers and immense customer demand was because companies had 'Pandemic Market Fit,' and not true 'Product Market Fit' (PMF), which is unravelling in the post-Covid world. Where will edtech go from here?
“It’s not rocket science,” reckons Anil Joshi. “Still, not many founders understand this,” says the venture capitalist, alluding to a quirky aspect of human behaviour. “Rockets are fascinating,” he says. The thrust, the take-off, the uplift and the speed… all are a visual delight and captivating. What, though, is freaky is the other side of the rocket, which nobody wants to look at, understand and talk about. For entrepreneurs and founders, achieving a rocket-speed kind of growth, Joshi underlines, can happen only when the venture (aka rocket) is propelled by enough fuel. “For any fledgling startup, that fuel happens to be venture capital,” he says. And once it dries up, vanishes or becomes hyper-precious—as it has now during the funding winter—the rockets struggle, and will crash.