At its peak in mid-april the virus caused nationwide school closures in more than 190 countries,

impacting ninety percent of total enrolled learners, or almost 1.6 billion people globally.

That's been a major learning curve for students, parents and educators, moving their teaching online.

But it's also been a boon for one of the world's fastest growing industries: Education technology.

To learn more, I'm speaking to three founders who are tapping into the billion dollar business opportunity.

Online learning is becoming mainstream. Parents and students alike are seeing the benefit in learning online.

On that single day, over 30,000 students registered.

If we are to believe the numbers, we need two-thirds of the workforce to be learning right now.

Even before the outbreak, education technology, or EdTech, was growing rapidly.

The e-learning industry is expected to be worth $350 billion by 2025,

three times more than it was worth in 2015, as classrooms move online.

That boom will be led in large part by Asia's growing youth populations.

One person who spotted that opportunity early on is Divya Gokulnath,

co-founder of the world's most valuable EdTech platform, Byju's.

The 33 year old entrepreneur and her co-founder, Byju Raveendran,

started the eight billion dollar business in India in 2011,

first by providing lessons to supplement what was being taught in schools.

As demand for its services grew, Byju's launched its flagship product, Byju's - the Learning App, in 2015.

With technology as an enabler,

you can actually take great quality content,

create it in one small part of the country, to all over the world.

The subscription platform, which now offers short video content on core primary and secondary school curricula,

has since amassed 50 million registered users in India and the Middle East.

More than a quarter of those joined in March and April,

when Byju's offered free access to its app as school closures started.

So 50 million is good. But what we closely track is actually the engagement on the app,

which is now during Covid 100 minutes per day.

And we also see an 85 percent renewal in our annual subscription rate.

The company also fast-tracked a number of developments, such as live classes

and localised languages, to support more students during the outbreak.

Divya says that could help close the education gap, especially for children in remote communities

hampered by poor access to high-quality teaching.

Think about it, what would be easier to do -

You give them an internet connection or set up schools and give them good teachers?

So the whole digital divide that we talk about, I think

it's a short-term problem, and it's easier to solve using technology because

technology can really solve any problem at scale.

As access to the internet grows across the globe,

so too has demand for education apps, with a renewed urgency because of the pandemic.

In March, when Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization,

education app downloads worldwide surged 90%

compared with the weekly average in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Much of that demand is from members of Gen Z, born between 1998 and 2012,

who are more active on non gaming apps compared to older generations.

That's a market Timothy Yu, founder and CEO of on-demand tutoring app Snapask is tapping into.

Since its launch in Hong Kong in 2015,

the platform, which is worth about $200 million dollars,

has connected 3.5 million high school and college students in Asia

with tutors for interactive question-and-answer sessions.

Schools in Asia were among the first to implement shutdowns,

which led to a surge in demand as 29 year-old Tim partnered with educators

and local authorities to offer free support.

In February and March total registered users on the platform jumped over 10 percent

When the outbreak happened, we can see the surge

happen from the back end.

So Hong Kong definitely started first, and then we can see a lot of traffic

is actually coming from Singapore and Taiwan.

That has not only help students gain personalized support in addition to their regular online classes

It has also eased the burden on teachers and provided

remote work for Snapask's some 300,000 tutors.

A lot of schools, since the suspension, they have moved most of the classes online.

They have been using Zoom or different types of conferencing tool,

but then still it's a one-to-many type of teaching,

which interactions and personalisation is still lacking.

To have a much better way to manage this, teachers they actually propose

how about we use Snapask to manage the entire interaction.

They can have the record and Snapask can use our technology to match the students to the best tutor.

Tim says that learning data could pave the way for a better educational experience

that's tailored to students individual needs.

The services that we're providing is just hitting the bare minimum to at least allow

learning to go on. But then there is a much bigger part after that.

For example, if we really want personalized learning to happen,

we need to all be very data-driven. How to best define a learning profile

and what are the ways to help the students which will be best suitable for them. It's mainly driven by data.

Education doesn't just stop after school or college though.

In an era of increasing tech disruption, continuous learning

is ever more important to safeguard jobs for the future.

The World Economic Forum has predicted that by 2022

over half of employees will need to upgrade or learn new skills to do their jobs -

and that was before the pandemic.

Now, as unemployment levels hit record highs,

economists are predicting that many of those jobs may not return at all.

We've got this mass

remobilizeation of the work force upon us,

and Covid just took that to a whole other level.

That's the problem 36 year old David Blake wants to address with LearnIn,

a service for employees to learn, or upgrade their skills,

which he says is a better alternative to job cuts.

Historically, it was sort of this lay people off fire people, furlough people, or retain people,

and we're saying there's a better way, there's a third option,

which is even in scenarios where you're going to have to meet payroll reductions,

do so by, instead of laying people off,

by putting people into low-cost high-quality training programs.

David launched the business with his co-founders and $3.5 million in funding

in mid-April, just as US unemployment claims soared.

LearnIn works with employers to figure out the skills they need to

future-proof their business and the investment it will take

Employees are then invited to complete relevant short training courses - at either full,

reduced, or no pay - with the guarantee of returning to work at the end.

That's not only beneficial for employees, who may otherwise be laid off says David.

It's also more cost-effective for employers,

who can save on rehiring when the economy recovers.

A lot of companies also are seeing increased demand and know that this is

more about proactive upscaling of the workforce,

and they're actually paying people to learn because they know that if they aren't

upskilling in their people now, they're going to be caught

flat-footed behind six months from now, 12 months from now.

And while career breaks or learning sabbaticals are not new,

David says the pandemic has shown that work and education no longer need to be mutually exclusive.

At every other point there's a tension between productivity and learning.

Any time you're spending over here learning is not time you're spending on productivity.

What we've seen is layoffs are extremely costly

and often, you know, ROI negative. And so companies that can be smart about

using the time to upskill in their people, you know, on the right time horizon

it's always going to be a win.

And the question is just about can a company navigate that time horizon.