“Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone!”

The thinning moral compass of the Indian EdTech industry

India is a land of competition. After all, there are 1.3 billion of us, vying for the same limited resources, fighting for the same jobs, and struggling to forge a unique identity to set ourselves apart from our 130 crore brethren.

The Indian startup ecosystem is no different. This is precisely why you see dozens of firms with similar business models and little to no differentiator in almost every space. Most of the new startups hastily copy their entire value proposition, strategy, and business model from existing western startups. It is just a race to who can plagiarize the fastest.

The meteoric rise of India’s EdTech sector is just a reflection of changing times. We already had a booming education business even before the internet was widespread — The Kota Factory. This small town in Rajasthan has become synonymous with coaching for competitive exams, primarily the JEE and sees more than 150,000 students come in from all over India annually. However, due to the astronomical pressure on kids aged 17 and younger, many of them succumb to substance abuse and other self-harm methods, tragically culminating in suicides.

With the advent of the internet, “coaching” is now, like a lot of other things, online. India…