EdTech vs HealthTech. Q3 2020

Nearly 20% of Global GDP is spent on Education and Healthcare. The pandemic marks a massive inflection point for these two precious and grossly under-appreciated engines of economic and social wellbeing.

20 November 2020

Representing $15T of annual global spend, Education and Healthcare are incredible engines of economic and social wellbeing. The COVID pandemic has been a tragic, once in a lifetime forcing function for innovation. This year alone, $30B of venture capital has been invested in digital learning and digital health startups.

The Oxford Dictionary defines Human Capital as “the skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population, viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organization or country”. Every year, the world invests $15T into Health and Education – the foundations of Human Capital. This is investment into our collective skills, knowledge and experience – made possible and productive by our mental and physical wellbeing. That’s nearly 1 in every 5 dollars of World Domestic Product or Global GDP, the “standard measure of the value-added created through the production of goods and services” (OECD).

National systems, policy differences and pandemics aside, together education and healthcare are the world’s economic and social wellbeing engines. The future of learning, the future of earning and the future of global health and wellbeing are the fundamental determinants of the future of humanity.

2 billion more learners between now and 2050.

Global population will expand by nearly 2 billion more people over the next 30 years. The education and healthcare systems of today, already under severe strain, compounded by the pandemic and primarily funded by governments struggling to balance budgets, need to innovate and evolve to deliver better education to more people. Much of the population growth will come from markets where better health and nutrition of children is fundamental to their ability to learn.

Global Capital vs Education and Health Flows

Representing $15T of annual global spend, Education and Healthcare are incredible economic and social wellbeing engines. That’s almost 20% of Global GDP. Over the decades, these two predominately public sectors have started to turn to public-private partnerships and capital markets to fund and fuel growth and innovation. Beginning with social infrastructure, then services and now digital infrastructure, institutions and companies of all kinds are collaborating to build a better future.

Asia leads Education Investment. North America leads Health.

Globally, HealthTech attracts more than 2x the venture capital investment that EdTech secures. However, this picture varies significantly in different regions of the world. For every $10 that North American venture capital invests in HealthTech, it invests only $1.50 of venture capital in EdTech. Asia, on the other hand, invests 1.5x more venture capital into HealthTech than it does into EdTech.

From a geographic share of global investment perspective, the split is a mirror image. Asia’s proportional investment in Global EdTech is about the same as North America’s share in Global HealthTech and vice versa.

70 Education & Health Tech Unicorns

Together EdTech and HealthTech have over 70 Unicorns. We maintain a complete list of all 20 EdTech Unicorns and 50 HealthTech Unicorns that are updated monthly as mega-funding pours into the space. These two sectors, once considered sleepy and fragmented, are increasingly thought of by governments and investors alike as fundamental to powering a global economy that will thrive through the 21st century.

Recent Research

HolonIQ India & South Asia EdTech 100

24 November 2020.

HolonIQ’s annual list of the most innovative EdTech startupsacross South Asia.