EdTech in Emerging Markets – Why Vietnam Looks Promising (and Why Thailand Might Not)

Everyone loves throwing “EdTech in emerging markets” into a pitch deck. Sounds huge, right? But if you’ve been paying attention to the mess at Byju’s, you know high growth in user numbers doesn’t automatically mean the business works.

Byju’s in India went cash flow negative — likely overspending on marketing, brand building, and aggressive customer acquisition. That’s not automatically bad if the spend pays back quickly. For EdTech, a healthy CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) payback is under 12 months, with the best subscription models hitting 5–7 months.

Global Market Context

The global EdTech market is still growing strong:

  • CAGR: 15–16.3%

  • Projected value: $404B by 2025
    But multiples have collapsed — from 7.2x in Q4 2020 to 1.6x by Q4 2024.

Emerging markets are a different animal entirely.

Vietnam – High Potential

Vietnam’s fertility rate is at 1.96, income growth at 9.6% YoY — incomes are rising, and families are spending more on education.

What people study matters:

  • Business: 12.6% of all university applications

  • Medicine: Most applied field overall

  • Languages/Foreign Culture: Second most popular after business

Medicine is particularly interesting — doctors are heavily respected in Vietnam, with cultural deference to medical professionals. That means if you’re running an EdTech platform that helps prepare students for medical degrees, you can charge a premium.

If you’re just selling generic coding bootcamps without a plan? Forget it. This market rewards relevancy, not hype.

Vietnamese EdTech market numbers:

  • Current value: $364.71M

  • CAGR: 11.1% (within global averages)

  • 100+ new companies in the last two years

Example: Topica Uni offers online bachelor’s degrees in Business, Accounting, Finance, IT, Law, etc., partnering with universities in Vietnam, the Philippines, and the U.S. They’ve even integrated 3D virtual environments for immersive learning.

Thailand – More Caution

Thailand’s biggest EdTech player, SkillLane, made just $920k in profit. The market itself:

  • Revenue (2023): $205M

  • CAGR: 3.32% through 2027 — way below global standards

There’s demand, but it’s slower growth.

  • Birth rate: 1.32 (shrinking market of young students)

  • Income growth: 1.7% (sluggish)

  • Only 14% of Thais over 25 have a college degree.

Academic performance is also declining — PISA scores in math, reading, and science are down. The bigger question: do parents actually care about improving these grades? In some places, the appetite for extra learning just isn’t there.

Thailand’s government is pushing “Thailand 4.0” to boost digital education, and they’re open to foreign tech. They use Chinese apps daily but aren’t fully dependent on China. Still, cultural adoption rates and willingness to pay remain unclear.

Indonesia – TBD

Indonesia’s a huge market, but the analysis needs its own deep dive. Population size is a plus, but income growth, digital infrastructure, and education culture will decide if EdTech can scale.

Lessons from Byju’s

India has more kids than all of Southeast Asia combined, which made Byju’s possible. At its peak:

  • 7.5M paying subscribers

  • 100M+ total users

  • $75M in Series C led by Sofina, with Sequoia as an existing investor

But growth came from signing families up for loans they barely understood, pouring money into ads, and expanding without sustainable unit economics. That’s a warning shot for SEA markets — you can’t brute-force scale where demographics, income growth, and willingness to pay aren’t in your favor.

Cost Structure Reality

In EdTech, big expenses aren’t just teachers:

  • Product development & tech infrastructure

  • Software/platform building and maintenance

  • Cloud services and hardware

  • Heavy marketing & CAC in competitive spaces

If CAC payback stretches past 12 months and retention isn’t strong, you’re burning cash with no guarantee of recovery.

Bottom Line

Vietnam has the right mix: rising incomes, cultural respect for professions like medicine, and a growing EdTech ecosystem. Thailand? Slower growth, aging population, weaker academic trends — more risk unless you’re solving a deep, urgent problem parents care about.

EdTech in SEA can work, but only if you tailor to the real market drivers, not just copy-paste a Byju’s playbook and hope.

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