Tale of 3 digital ecosystems in India?—?Jio vs Amazon vs Walmart-Flipkart (Part -3)

In this 3rd part of the series, I will be comparing these 4 digital ecosystems across EdTech & SaaS/Software sectors –

Let me directly jump onto how the overview looks like through the table below:

6) Education Tech – This is one space which is completely dominated at this point of time by Jio Ecosystem through its investee companies. Jio had acquired Embibe platform in the recent past which has become their go to platform for test prep and Funtoot which is the platform for K12 learning needs of a kid. They already have a Jio Institute(University) which is in the making (already designated as the Institute of National importance!) in the offline education space. Apart from these, Mark Zuckerberg through his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative(CZI) has invested in top Indian EdTech startups like Byjus and Unacademy. Apart from these prominent companies, they also have eEducation, Bolo, Classroom and Youtube Kids properties in Ed Tech sector. Among all these various companies, they cover all form of education, right from K12 to continued learning space and online as well as offline. Jio Ecosystems has a massive presence in this sector and none of the other ecosystems are even anywhere near it. For the record, Flipkart has invested in a startup called Tinystep(more so for new parents) and Softbank Ecosystem via FirstCry has invested in Oi Playschools which is an offline playschool. Amazon ecosystem currently has no presence here and it needs to be seen how they will engage in this segment which is huge especially in India.

My Take

I believe Flipkart, Softbank and Amazon ecosystem can do much more in this segment and maybe we can expect some action from them in the near future. I am sure they wouldn't want to miss out on this EdTech opportunity in India which can probably taken to the world.

7) Software/SaaS – They say software is eating the world and if we believe that to be true then we can comfortably say that Jio ecosystem will be eating India and the world. Just look at the variety of tools at disposal of Jio Ecosystem due to the strong partnerships which they have built with the Tech giants(Google, Facebook & Microsoft). They have dominant presence across workplace collaboration tools, e-commerce enablement tools and marketing software through their partnerships. Apart from these, they have their own indigenous software too in these spaces like Jio Ads, JioPOS, MyJio, JioMart B2B, Jiomeet, etc. They also have some presence through their own apps in financial software – JioGST, Pharma software – C-Square solutions, Society Management app – JioGate, Feedback app – Jio Mitra & Hiring Tech – Jio Careers.

Amazon ecosystem has some presence in this sector through some companies like Chime, Workdocs, Qwikcilver and QuessCorp. Flipkart ecosystem has miniscule presence via NGPay and Easyrewards. Softbank ecosystem has no startup based out of India in SaaS/Software space. All these 3 ecosystems have a good scope to build/buy startups in this space.

The bigger question here, is, that does it make sense for all these ecosystems to get into the Software/SaaS space directly? I don’t think so. What do you think?

That’s my brief on how these 4 ecosystems stack up against each other in the EdTech and Software/SaaS space. Please reach out to me if you are building on any of the opportunities outlined above or you have thoughts on what other opportunities could be created. Also, happy to understand your thoughts on how do you think about this comparison.

In the fourth and last part, I will try and do a similar comparison for Content and Others sector. Till then, stay tuned.

You can read the previous 2 articles here – Part 1 & Part 2

Disclaimer — All the views/analysis in the article above are my personal views and does not indicate views of the firm I work with.

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