Edtech has failed in India because there is very little tech and even little education in the apps. Mostly edtech in India equates to exam preparation apps.
Other approaches like the duolingo gamification approaches have also failed to actually educate users though some of them have found success as startups.
This has lead to a disillusionment among parents about the edtech promise. Also, unfortunately the big successes of edtech(Byjus, Whitehat etc) turned out to be bad apples.
But lets take the positives. The main positive is that parents and kids are willing to try and there is a huge market. They just need the right product.
My takeaways are as follows:
1. Too many products try to reinvent the wheel with their own curriculum etc. This creates an extra burden for students who have to study these in addition to their course work. Given the paucity of time, guess what they drop?
2. Too much gamification and engagement farming. The emphasis on gamification instead of learning.
3. Most edtech is about putting videos online and adding quizzes. No emphasis on making the content actually interactive and engaging. In this day and age why shouldn't text books be interactive.
This is what I am focusing on and helping my wife do a startup in this space(I am unfortunately busy with running a SaaS startup, so I just help out of passion :))
So far, we have made the whole of CBSE(India's national curriculum) curriculum for math as an interactive textbook. But it's a long journey. There is no hurry. The revolution has just started :)