In 2022, India’s biggest edtech companies did something unexpected: they opened physical classrooms.
BYJU’S — at the time the world’s most valuable edtech company — launched 300 tuition centres. Vedantu spent US$40 million acquiring an offline coaching chain. PhysicsWallah, once a YouTube-only teaching channel, opened hundreds of brick-and-mortar centres and became the sector’s breakout success.
The message was clear: pure online learning had failed. And the industry needed a new word for what came next.
They called it phygital — a portmanteau of “physical” and “digital.” But what most people miss is that this isn’t just an Indian story. It’s a global one. And for some companies, phygital wasn’t a pivot. It was the plan from the start.
It’s Not Just India
The phygital shift is happening on every continent — just under different names.
In Vietnam, they call it “OMO” — Online-Merge-Offline. BrightChamps, a US$650 million Indian edtech company, launched phygital “Next-Gen Hubs” in Ho Chi Minh City in 2023: half the classes are live 1-on-1 online; the other half are in-person at the hub, in small groups matched by an adaptive learning algorithm. Galaxy Education, a Vietnamese company, has built a profitable OMO model for English learning — raising over US$10 million while staying in the black. The Vietnamese government has set a target: 80% of public schools on edtech platforms by 2027.
In Latin America, the concept has a different flavour. The Phygital School Games launched in Guatemala, Colombia, and Brazil — thousands of school-age children competing in hybrid digital-and-physical sport. In Brazil, the São Paulo State School Sports Federation signed an agreement to introduce phygital sport into schools statewide. The World Phygital Community, which organises these programmes, is now active in over 115 countries.
In Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia partnered with Cisco to convert six classrooms into smart hybrid spaces under its enVision 2025 initiative. Across Southeast Asia, HolonIQ reports that governments are “investing at scale in vocational education and skills pipelines” — and those pipelines are increasingly hybrid.
Even the language-learning sector reflects this shift. Between 2023 and 2025, over 1,400 funding rounds were directed at language-learning startups, totalling more than US$2 billion in capital raised. Platforms offering hybrid learning solutions saw a 37% higher funding rate compared to single-format tools. The market is clearly voting for phygital.
And the research says it plainly: “The future of education is Phygital — removing barriers between physical and virtual, academic and industrial, local and global.” That’s not a startup pitch. It’s from a 2025 industry research report by Ambow and Silicon Times.
Why Pure-Online Education Failed
The Indian edtech crash provides the clearest cautionary tale, because it was the most dramatic — but the lessons apply everywhere.
India’s edtech venture funding collapsed from US$4.1 billion in 2021 to just US$166 million in 2025. BYJU’S, once valued at US$22 billion, went through a spectacular implosion. Three hard lessons emerged:
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Parents don’t trust what they can’t see. In most of Asia, education is the single largest household investment after housing. Parents want to walk into a centre, meet a teacher, and see their child’s progress with their own eyes. A screen-only model doesn’t provide that.
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Completion rates were terrible. Online courses worldwide suffer from 5–15% completion rates. Without physical accountability — a scheduled class, a teacher who notices you’re absent, a peer group expecting you to show up — most students disengage.
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Digital infrastructure was uneven. In Tier 2 and 3 cities across Asia, internet connectivity and device access remain unreliable. A model that only works online excludes the families who need education most.
As one India-focused analysis put it: “The winners of the next decade will not be those who shout loudest, but those who build Phygital infrastructure that respects the parent’s need for trust, tangible outcomes, and value for money.”
Two Kinds of Phygital
“Phygital” gets used loosely, but it actually describes two different things — and understanding the difference is key.
Micro-phygital is what happens inside the learning experience. A child arranges physical letter tiles on a table while an AI-powered camera reads their arrangement and responds with instant feedback on screen. A student scans an AR marker on a physical worksheet to see a 3D animation appear on their tablet. The physical action triggers the digital response; the digital output deepens the physical interaction. This is phygital at the level of pedagogy.
Macro-phygital is what happens around the learning experience. A physical learning centre combined with a digital platform. Students attend classes at a centre, then continue practising, reviewing, and getting AI-assisted feedback through an app at home. The centre provides trust and accountability; the platform provides scalability and continuity. This is phygital at the level of business model.
Both are necessary. Most of the companies now pivoting to phygital are adding macro-phygital (centres) to an existing digital product. But they often overlook micro-phygital — the learning experience itself remains screen-first.
Built Phygital: A Different Story
In 2019, a Hong Kong edtech company called Kazoo Technology ran a pilot project with The Education University of Hong Kong’s Institute of Special Needs and Inclusive Education. The goal: support Chinese-language learning for children who often struggled with traditional methods — non-native speakers and students with special educational needs.
The approach was micro-phygital from the start. Children used tactile play materials — physical objects they could touch, arrange, and manipulate — while an AI-powered platform provided voice recognition, real-time feedback, and adaptive learning paths. The physical anchored the learning in sensory experience. The digital made it responsive and personalisable.
The pilot succeeded. Schools adopted it. Today, more than 100 schools and NGOs in Hong Kong use Turtle Learn’s materials in their classrooms.
But what makes this story different from the Indian pivot narrative is that Turtle Learn didn’t add physical presence after a digital failure. The tactile-first approach was the starting point. The product was designed as phygital from day one — before the word became an industry buzzword.
When Turtle Learn expanded into Vietnam and Indonesia, the same phygital DNA adapted to a different context. Franchise partners like KiddiHub (Hanoi) and Kiddo (Jakarta) operate Turtle Learn learning centres — physical spaces where kids use the same tactile kits with the same AI-powered feedback. These centres also supply programmes to nearby kindergartens and schools. The medium-term goal: 100 learning centres across ASEAN in five years.
The Same Product, Different Trust
Here’s what the phygital shift reveals about education markets: the product can be the same, but the distribution model adapts to where trust lives.
In Hong Kong, trust lives in institutions. When a school adopts Turtle Learn, parents trust it because the school has vetted it. The phygital model here is school-validated: the physical classroom experience legitimises the digital platform.
In Vietnam and Indonesia, trust lives in presence. Parents can walk into a Turtle Learn centre, observe a class, and talk to a teacher. The phygital model here is centre-validated: the physical learning space legitimises the digital platform.
This isn’t a weakness. It’s how phygital education works by nature. The tactile + digital learning experience is universal; how you deliver it depends on the market’s trust infrastructure. And that adaptability is exactly what makes phygital more resilient than pure-online ever was.
What Comes Next
The phygital shift in education is still early. Most companies are adding physical elements to digital products and calling it done. But the deeper opportunity is building from the other direction: starting with the physical learning experience — tactile, social, embodied — and using technology to make it smarter, more adaptive, and more accessible.
That’s the story that’s just beginning to be told. And it’s the one we’ll be exploring in this series.
In the next post, we’ll look at what micro-phygital actually looks like inside a Hong Kong classroom — and what the evidence says about why tactile learning works.
Kendall Lo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kazoo Technology, the Hong Kong company behind Turtle Learn — a phygital Chinese-language learning platform used in schools and learning centres across Hong Kong and globally.
