Centre should seriously consider lowering GST on private upskilling courses: Great Learning

Presently, online courses and training programs are taxed 18%, the reduction of which has been a constant ask of the edtech industry for years. However, the government hasn’t considered any changes so far.

Bengaluru: The Centre should earnestly consider lowering the goods and services tax (GST) on private upskilling courses, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mohan Lakhamraju of edtech platform Great Learning told DH in an interview on Wednesday. 

Presently, online courses and training programs are taxed 18 per cent, the reduction of which has been a constant ask of the edtech industry for years. However, the government hasn’t considered any changes so far. 

The Bengaluru-headquartered company also spoke about how non-technical background professionals are outperforming the technical professionals when it comes to tech courses like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and others. While courses which have faculties are priced highly, the company is focusing on bringing more AI learning modules which will be comparatively priced much lower. 

“While a majority of the money for launching our AI learning platform has gone into research and development (R&D), we expect to recover it soon as there is a good enough demand in the market. This way, we won’t have to pay a high fee to professors, making it more affordable for students and professionals,” Lakhamraju said at an event.