Panasonic Enters Edtech Market With CareerEx, Xcelit Apps For College, School Students

Looks like edtech is slowly becoming a lucrative sector, even for consumer tech giants. The Indian arm of Japanese multinational Panasonic has launched CareerEx and Xcelit to enter the Indian edtech market. Both products are aimed at solving the skill development gap in India’s deeptech sector. 

While CareerEx is designed to help college and university students get training in emerging technologies such as data science, cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and internet of things (IoT), Xcelit is focused on school students from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The products are said to also help schoolgoers in their preparation for competitive exams. 

CareerEx courses are priced at the starting cost of INR 9999 per month, while Xcelit courses start from INR 999 per month. The products will also offer individual tests for INR 99. Both apps are available on Android and iOS devices. 

Students on both apps can get a chance to work on Panasonic projects and internships. The company has collaborated with various educational institutions to develop courses in CareerEx and Xcelit. These products have been developed for students, colleges, and universities, to bridge the existing skill development gap between the education system and the employment needs of the industry in the future, Panasonic said.

According to Atsushi Motoya, head of Panasonic India Innovation Centre, the Japanese electronics major is looking to impacting over 100K students with these edtech products in the next five years. 

Skill Gap In Indian Market

The India Skills Report 2019 found that about 50% of the job applicants in India either have very basic or no required skills for the job, which highlights the need to train individuals in the skills, techniques and technology that businesses are actually using today. Other startups in this skilling space include Pesto, upGrad, Udacity, UnAcademy and others that offer professionals and students online upskilling and reskilling courses.

According to World Economic Forum, over half of the workers in India will need reskilling by 2022, to meet the future talent demands. Also according to a Datalabs by Inc42 study, the scarcity of high skilled labour in India was one of the biggest hindrances in the business growth of deeptech startups operating in India. 

Narendra Modi government had launched the Skill India initiative in 2015. The programme aimed to train more than 400 Mn people in different skills by 2022. However till June 2018, only 40 Mn people were trained, wherein 25 Mn people were trained under the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry.