Amazon will cut off a successful academy project in India

The company revealed that Amazon Academy, an online learning platform it developed in India for high school students, will shut down.

They say that they will stop offering edtech services across the country beginning in August 2023. Anyone enrolled for the current academic year will receive a full refund. 

After testing the platform since 2019, Amazon released Academy or JEE Ready in early 2018. The goal was to help students prepare for admissions to the top engineering schools in the country. 

The service provided curated learning materials, live lectures, mock tests, and thorough assessments to help students in learning and practising maths, physics, and chemistry in order to prepare for the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE), a government-backed engineering entrance assessment held in India for admission to various engineering colleges throughout the country.

Some think Amazon was trying to compete with Byju’s, Unacademy, and Vedantu because of their comprehensive offering.

A significant portion of the population in India, where more than 260 million children attend school, believe that education is crucial for both economic progress and a higher standard of living. Facebook also invested in Unacademy, a company that offers online education courses and has offices in Bangalore.

Google invested in Indian edtech startup Cuemath and collaborated with CBSE to train more than 1 million teachers in India. Google also provided a variety of free tools like G Suite for Education, Google Classroom, and YouTube to support the country’s transition to a digital education system.

Amazon did not give any reasons for closing the Academy but most likely it was part of the ongoing cost-cutting initiatives.

Amazon will cut 10,000 jobs and roles have already begun to disappear in fields like products and services. Amazon reportedly fired staff in charge of developing AWS tutorials and other online courses.