LG targets India’s edtech market with interactive whiteboards

LG Electronics Inc. is acclerating its foray into India’s business-to-business (B2B) market, zooming in on the country’s rapidly-growing education technology (edtech) market with interactive whiteboards, also called smart boards.

The Digital India campaign, launched in 2015, offers a good opportunity for the South Korean home appliances maker to penetrate into India’s $10 billion education market, utilizing its cutting-edge technology for TVs as the world’s largest OLED TV brand.

India is keen to improve online infrastructure and digital education at state-run institutions and students to transform India into a digitally empowered nation.

LG had supplied 10,000 units of LG CreateBoard, an electronic whiteboard, to 2,900 public high schools in Odisha, a state of India, in the past three years until last year.

Odisha is one of the three government-designated technology hubs in India.

LG CreateBoard is an interactive board, used to increase instructional efficiency in classroom and conference.

It can be easily converted to a blackboard, video or presentation material with simple on-screen manipulation. It also displays various educational templates such as figures and diagrams.

Electronic whiteboards are expected to expedite LG’s transformation into a software-driven platform company from a white goods manufacturer and beef up its B2B services, one of its main growth drivers.

The multitouch screen can detect up to 40 touches simultaneously.

The built-in app, dubbed LG Create Board Share, enables users to bring up as many as nine screens simultaneously when sharing students' results during class.

The electronic whiteboard will increase students' class efficiency and provide high-quality classes with various digital contents, LG said in a press release.

LG carries them directly to customers scattered across India and visits them to show how to use the interactive displays.

Over the past five years, the number of interactive whiteboards supplied in India had soared at an annual average rate of about 80%, according to research firm Omdia.

Statista, a data provider, forecast India’s edtech market to grow at an average of 30% annually to $10.4 billion by 2025 from around $2.8 billion in 2020.

LG Electronics, now in its 27th year in India, operates a subsidiary in charge of sales, production and R&D operations in the world’s most populous country.

In June last year, its Chief Executive Cho Joo-wan visited its Indian subsidiary to explore new businesses, including electronic whiteboards and edtech using IT solutions.

Write to Chae-Yeon Kim at Why29@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article