...for e-Learning Market over the next decade
London, 14th May 2013: Industry research into the parallels between the education and media industries conducted by specialist media investment and advisory firm IBIS Capital and Edxus Group, an education technology company established to develop and acquire e-learning businesses, has revealed enormous potential for the future of the e-learning market. While education as a whole is triple the size of the media and entertainment industry at $4.2 trillion, digital education is currently only 20% of the size of the digital media market. Since education is undergoing the same disruptive effects of digitalisation that the media industry has seen in recent years, IBIS Capital and Edxus Group expect to see fifteen fold growth in the e-learning market in the next 10 years to represent 30% of the total education market. In addition, if private funding becomes more widely available to support innovation and consolidation in the sector and historical impediments to the development of digital education are diminished, the transition to digital education will be even quicker and more disruptive than that observed in the media industry over the past decade.
“The education and media industries have striking parallels. They are both about delivering content and engaging audiences. The four disruptive effects of digitalisation as observed in the media industry - profusion of new content, audience fragmentation, data centricity and ultimately convergence between content and platform players - will affect education in the very same way and lead to a massive growth if both private investments and public initiatives can be aligned to create a fertile ecosystem,” stated Edxus Group co-founder and CEO and former strategy senior executive at Time Warner, Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet.
In order to foster this ecosystem, IBIS Capital and Edxus Group have created EdTech Europe, an exclusive one day summit on June 14th in London addressing the current industry and investment trends in education technology and e-learning. Bringing together senior executives from established professional learning and education players, innovators disrupting the established market order and leading European institutional investors, the event will explore the business of education and act as a catalyst for the consolidation and investment required in the sector.
The event will feature a series of keynotes from major players in the digital education industry, including:
Engaging content: Juan Lopez Valcarcel, Chief Digital Officer, Pearson International
Delivery in the e-Learning Age: Mark Stewart, UK Strategic Education Partner Lead, Microsoft
Return on Education (RoE) - Assessment & Analytics: Dr. Ulrik Juul Christensen, McGrawHill (LearnSmart)
There will also be an Industry, Innovators and Investors Panel and Q&A featuring representatives from t-Ventures and Providence Equity. A number of innovative industry players will also have the chance to showcase their products and services, including:
Languagelab.com: a strategic learning partner helping organisations achieve their learning and development goals by offering virtual world training, e-learning solutions and consultancy services.
iVersity: a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform cooperating with the best instructors, universities and knowledge-based companies to democratize education.
InfoMentor: an online and mobile solution creating the right conditions for learning by uniting planning, teaching, assessment, reporting and collaboration functions in one platform.
Mendeley: a free reference manager and academic social network that helps users organise research, collaborate with others online and discover the latest research. Mendeley was recently acquired by publishing giant Reed Elsevier for a sum thought to be between $69 million and $100 million.
“There is a paradigm shift underway in the education industry. Existing businesses are having to adapt quickly, new businesses are emerging and investors are seeking ways to respond to these new opportunities. EdTech Europe will look at the key trends, the new business models that are emerging and what investors should be looking for. Event attendees will leave having discovered business development paths in the new world of education, with a clear idea of what is needed, how it is going to happen and having met people who are instigating this change, including potential investors,” said Charles McIntyre, IBIS Capital co-Founder and CEO.
Also being unveiled at the event will be the winners of the EdTech Europe 20 recognising the most innovative and fastest growing e-learning companies in Europe. Judged by an industry-leading panel, submission criteria include revenue growth, scale, innovation and market impact.
