Why can't your edtech capture India's cross-industry AI upskilling market? Wrong strategies hold back your growth

As we enter 2026, AI-driven transformation is reshaping nearly every industry and job role across India, creating a sharp surge in demand for career-focused AI upskilling that cuts across traditional sector boundaries. To unpack what professionals actually seek from AI-focused upskilling courses, and how edtech businesses can better serve this fast-growing market, Google and Kantar released new 2025 research tracking the full enrollment journey of paid online course learners across India. This research draws on input from 1,000 past, current, and prospective adult paid online course learners, paired with actionable case studies from leading Indian edtech brands that have already leveraged AI to capture scalable growth. This article will synthesize key market insights, outline proven AI-powered marketing including high-performing search engine marketing and product innovation strategies, and share clear actionable guidance to help edtech businesses capitalize on the cross-industry AI upskilling boom, with key insights into effective SEM and SEM google best practices for edtech growth.

1. Market Context and Core Demand Insights for Cross-Industry AI Upskilling

AI is already transforming industries and jobs across India, and this widespread shift has motivated millions of professionals to turn to edtech services to upskill and advance their careers amid growing concern about AI’s impact on their role security and long-term progression. The 2025 Google/Kantar survey confirms that 60% of surveyed professionals are actively considering AI’s influence on their current roles, and this consideration directly shapes their upskilling choices. When ranking preferred upskilling course categories, AI and machine learning takes second place overall, falling only behind coding and programming. A key, often overlooked trend revealed by the research is that AI-related course enrollees do not come solely from the technology sector; they represent a wide range of industries, with particularly high participation from finance, manufacturing, education and healthcare. This cross-industry demand makes it critical for edtech businesses to first understand the core motivations and decision-making factors of these diverse learners to build offerings that satisfy their unique needs.

The survey finds that the top three core motivations for cross-industry professionals pursuing AI upskilling are advancing their careers, staying relevant amid ongoing industry shifts, and building foundational AI skills. This deep career focus directly shapes the factors learners use to evaluate and select courses, with four factors rising to the top: career services and placement support, course curriculum, course flexibility, and the reputation of the partnering university or institution. To stand out in this crowded market, edtech brands must go beyond merely delivering core course content to build customized value-added learning experiences that align with these priorities. Specifically, surveyed professionals identify career coaching, practical real-world examples, and interview preparation support as essential features for a positive user experience, all of which tie directly to their core goal of career advancement.

Research into the enrollment journey also uncovers key pain points and behavior patterns that shape effective go-to-market strategies. The survey finds that 63% of learners feel overwhelmed by the number and similarity of available course options, and most turn to trusted digital platforms to gain clarity and confidence in their final decisions. 77% of professionals use Google Search and/or YouTube for initial course discovery, and 73% use these same platforms for detailed research when making their final enrollment decision. When researching courses, 86% of learners recall seeing an online ad, with Google Search (81%) and YouTube (73%) ranking as the top two platforms where they encounter these ads. Furthermore, 75% of learners find ads on Google Search “very influential,” and 73% say the same for YouTube ads, confirming these platforms are the most critical touchpoints for reaching and converting cross-industry upskilling learners via search engine marketing.

2. AI-Powered Marketing Strategies to Reach and Convert Qualified Upskilling Learners

Based on the clear insights about where learners search for courses and what content resonates with them, edtech brands can leverage AI-powered marketing strategies including well-optimized SEM search advertising to maximize reach, resonance, and conversion of qualified upskilling learners across industries. The first foundational step is to develop ad messages aligned with proven learner preferences, as the survey confirms that “real-world success stories of previous learners” is the top ad message most likely to capture the attention of surveyed professionals, and this core insight holds true for all forms of SEM and Google advertising. Leading edtech platform upGrad has leveraged this insight to deliver impressive results with an immersive, resonant branding campaign on YouTube that successfully drove consideration among cross-industry upskilling professionals. The brand used Demand Gen with both skippable and non-skippable video ads to showcase the theme of “Real People, Real Stories,” featuring testimonials from over 70,000 students that highlighted how upGrad courses helped them advance their careers. The campaign combined branding and performance marketing efforts, and delivered measurable strong results: it drove a 5.6X search lift and a 45% higher payment ratio for users who were exposed to both the branding and performance campaigns, proving that aligned, AI-powered Google advertising across Google’s platforms drives tangible business growth, and well-executed SEM google strategies consistently outperform outdated marketing approaches for edtech brands.

Beyond resonant creative, edtech brands can leverage two types of AI-powered Google campaigns to extend reach and maximize conversion efficiency, even for a diverse cross-industry audience. The first is AI Max for Search campaigns, which allow brands to extend their reach into more of learners’ new, complex queries by intelligently adapting ad content to match user intent in real time. This capability is particularly valuable for the cross-industry upskilling market, where learners come from diverse professional backgrounds and search for courses using a wide range of unique, sector-specific queries that may not be covered by traditional, rigid search engine marketing campaigns, making flexible SEM search advertising the ideal approach. The second key AI-powered campaign type is Performance Max, which enables brands to convert learners at scale wherever they are across all of Google’s channels, including Search, Display, and YouTube. Performance Max, a core offering for Google ads, uses the full power of Google AI from end to end to improve bidding, audience targeting, and creative optimization to maximize overall campaign performance for all SEM initiatives.

Leading edtech organization Emeritus used this strategy to achieve strong results when it set out to increase awareness and valuable conversions among higher-education learners seeking AI upskilling. By leveraging Performance Max, which used audience signals and search themes to reach the right high-intent audiences faster across Google channels, the brand was able to drive incremental qualified leads. The campaign delivered an impressive 74% jump in qualified leads at a 51% lower cost per qualified lead, while total applications soared 76%, demonstrating the power of AI-powered Google ads to deliver both higher volume of qualified learners and lower customer acquisition costs for edtech brands running search engine marketing campaigns.

3. AI-Powered EdTech Product Innovation to Meet Cross-Industry Upskilling Needs

Beyond improving marketing performance, integrating AI into core edtech products and learning experiences is critical to fully meeting the cross-industry upskilling needs of diverse professionals, and can drive sustained long-term growth by helping brands differentiate their offerings in a crowded market. According to 2025 joint industry research focused on India’s professional upskilling market, 60% of surveyed professionals are actively considering AI’s influence on their current roles, and AI and machine learning have become the second most popular course category choice for upskilling professionals, only after coding and programming. Learners pursuing AI-related upskilling come from a wide range of industries beyond the technology sector, particularly finance, manufacturing, education and healthcare, which makes developing AI-aligned product innovations that fit the needs of diverse learners a core priority for edtech businesses looking to capture new growth opportunities, including those building out their SEM funnels. The research also confirms that career advancement, staying relevant amid ongoing industry shifts, and building proficiency in AI are the top three motivations for professionals to pursue upskilling, and career services and placement support ranks as the top factor that learners use to evaluate and select which course to enrol in. Leading edtech brands have already begun rolling out AI-powered product innovations that align directly with the core learner priority of career advancement, and these innovations have helped them capture new market share across cross-industry segments. Core AI-powered features include always-available personal learning support that acts as a 24/7 personal coach for learners, able to answer questions in real time, guide individual learning progress, and tailor learning pathways to each learner’s specific needs and pace, which is particularly valuable for learners coming from non-technology backgrounds who may need additional on-demand support as they build new AI skills from scratch. Additional AI-powered tools focused on career preparation directly support learners’ core goal of career advancement by providing customized interview practice and personalized, targeted feedback, directly addressing the top learner demand for useful, career-focused learning support. Other AI integrations across learning platforms enable educators to generate consistent, unbiased feedback for more impactful performance evaluations, saving educators valuable time while delivering more reliable, consistent learning insights for learners, which overall improves the quality of the entire learning experience, and on-demand AI-powered tutoring can also be deployed across all courses to provide flexible, accessible support for learners across diverse backgrounds. These AI-powered product innovations not only improve the overall learning experience for cross-industry upskilling learners but also help edtech brands differentiate their offerings in a market where 63% of learners report feeling overwhelmed by the similarity of available course options. By building AI-powered features that directly address learner priorities around career support, curriculum quality, and personalized learning, edtech brands can create clear competitive advantages that resonate with professionals across all industries seeking AI upskilling, building long-term learner loyalty and word-of-mouth growth that supports sustained, profitable business expansion even as competition in SEM google grows.

4. Actionable Growth Guidance for EdTech Clients to Capitalize on Upskilling Opportunities

Drawing on the latest research insights and proven case studies from leading edtech brands, there are clear actionable steps that edtech businesses can take to update their growth playbooks and capitalize on the fast-growing cross-industry AI upskilling market in India. First, edtech brands should align their course offerings and core value propositions with the core priorities that cross-industry learners have identified in the research. This means moving beyond offering only basic course content to add high-value career-focused support, including career coaching, interview preparation, and placement support, which rank as the top factor learners use when choosing a course. Brands should also ensure their course curricula are accessible and tailored to the needs of professionals from non-technology sectors, given that AI upskilling demand is coming from a wide range of industries including finance, manufacturing, education, and healthcare, not just technology. Second, edtech brands should prioritize advertising across the digital touchpoints that learners actually use for discovery and decision-making, which are Google Search and YouTube, and to build a stable, high-performing advertising presence on these platforms, edtech brands can leverage professional support from Topkee, which provides one-stop online advertising services based on Google ads for both small businesses and large companies to help increase potential customers and sales while improving overall advertising ROI for all SEM initiatives. Given that 77% of learners use these platforms for initial discovery and 73% use them for final research before enrolling, having a strong, visible presence on these platforms via SEM search advertising is non-negotiable for capturing market share in this growing segment. When creating ad content, brands should prioritize featuring real-world success stories from previous learners, as this is the top ad message that resonates with and captures the attention of upskilling professionals across all industries, and Topkee can support this with AI-powered graphic and text creative production that combines product information and market trends to deliver high-quality creative assets that boost online marketing efficiency for your search engine marketing campaigns. Third, brands should adopt AI-powered marketing campaigns to improve reach and conversion efficiency, and Topkee’s full-stack services can help edtech brands optimize every part of their Google advertising campaigns, from initial keyword research to final performance attribution for SEM. For search marketing, AI Max for Search campaigns can help brands reach learners with complex, new queries by adapting ad content to match user intent in real time, which is critical for serving a diverse cross-industry audience with varied search behavior when running SEM google initiatives. Topkee supports this strategy with in-depth keyword research that sorts out core keywords matching your business, continuously expands keyword lists with professional tools, and integrates smart bidding and broad matching strategies to improve ad reach, relevance and overall effectiveness of your Google ads. It also offers comprehensive website assessment and analysis that identifies SEO problems, provides targeted solutions, and optimizes website content to meet SEO requirements, complementing your SEM efforts to help brands gain greater exposure and higher conversion rates of potential customers. For cross-channel conversion at scale, brands should leverage Performance Max campaigns, which use Google AI across all channels to optimize bidding, audience targeting, and creative to deliver more qualified leads at a lower cost for your search engine marketing strategy. And Topkee offers specialized support for Google Pmax campaigns alongside a full range of ad format services including keyword search ads, Google Display Network Ads, YouTube ads and Google remarketing to cover all campaign needs for SEM search advertising. Topkee also provides efficient marketing tools including TTO, which supports multi-advertising account management, one-click conversion event setting and full automated data synchronization, and TM, a more flexible customer tracking tool than UTM that allows customized rule configuration to generate trackable landing links and make your Google advertising activities more accurate and targeted. Beyond that, Topkee offers customized marketing activity theme proposal services that save brands planning time, data-driven attribution remarketing strategies that segment user groups and deliver personalized remarketing content, which can increase purchase likelihood by more than 70% compared to non-targeted regular ads for SEM google campaigns. And periodic advertising report analysis that covers ad performance, conversion results and ROI, provides targeted optimization solutions for budget control, click-through rate improvement and conversion cost reduction, and helps brands adjust future advertising plans to continuously improve campaign performance for your Google ads. Fourth, edtech brands should invest in integrating AI-powered innovations into their core products and learning platforms to meet learner expectations and differentiate their offerings from competitors. This can include adding AI-powered personal coaching tools, AI mock interview features to support career preparation, AI-assisted grading for educators, and on-demand AI tutoring, all of which directly address learner priorities around career advancement and high-quality learning experiences. By following these clear, research-backed steps and partnering with Topkee to optimize Google advertising execution and strategy, edtech businesses can better reach, engage, and convert learners across their entire decision-making journey, positioning themselves for profitable growth in the 2026 AI upskilling market with a high-performing SEM strategy.

Conclusion

The cross-industry AI upskilling market in India is growing rapidly, driven by widespread recognition of AI’s impact on job roles across every sector, and edtech businesses that align their strategies with documented learner priorities and leverage AI for both marketing and product innovation are well positioned to capture significant, sustainable growth. Key research confirms that cross-industry upskilling learners prioritize career support, flexible high-quality curricula from reputable institutions, and AI-powered features that support their learning and career goals, and they rely primarily on Google Search and YouTube to discover and evaluate courses for brands running search engine marketing. AI-powered marketing campaigns like Performance Max and AI Max for Search, core tools for modern SEM, help brands reach more qualified learners at lower customer acquisition cost, while AI-powered product innovations create differentiated experiences that drive learner satisfaction and retention. For edtech businesses looking to refine their strategies and navigate this fast-evolving market, consulting with experienced professional advisors specialized in SEM search advertising and edtech product strategy can provide tailored support to align your growth plans with market needs and maximize your return on investment from Google advertising.

Appendix

1. How to win over India’s professionals in the AI age: New insights and strategies for edtech brands
2. The one marketing shift that unlocks growth for SMBs: Switch to data-driven attribution
3. How India’s SaaS brands can create, scale and supercharge global growth