The global market upsurge in web traffic and revenues during the epidemic: an exploratory research of e-learning companies

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand the market for various e-learning platforms existing globally. The global pandemic transformed the traditional education sector into an e-learning industry and impacted the digital education sector proportionally. The wide impact on people to maintain a social distance shortened the space and enhanced student engagement with digital screens. The merchandise of electronic gadgets and e-learning platforms boosted global revenues ever before. Design/methodology/approach - A digital data analytical tool retrieved the data for e-learning companies. While screening companies, the authors came up with more than 150 and later narrowed it to 71. Furthermore, revenues and market capitalisation data were collected from open-source websites of respective e-learning platforms at national and international stock exchanges. The data from the year 2018 to 2021 was used to predict the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the 2022–2027 market value of e-learning companies. The demographics of the statistical data were plotted using GraphPad Prism and Python Plotly. Also, the study attempted to underpin the association of annual revenue with market capitalisation for e-learning companies using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Findings - The financials of the e-learning platforms were compared from 2018 to 2021 based on the stock market exchange, which showed a gradual increase in revenues and influenced the market capitalisation by the 2022 financial year. Also, simultaneously validating the CAGR of 13.16%, the expected revenues from 2022 to 2027 were $830bn. The data plotted on the atlas choropleth exhibiting the e-learning users increased globally by 2022. The Web traffic data validated by the browsing gadget helped to validate the increase in revenues of the electronic gadget companies. Originality/value - To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the pioneer studies postulating the study of e-learning demographics comparing the e-learning influence on the global digital market, Web user traffic and the education sector. The demographics of e-learning users by age, gender and gadget distribution validate the e-learning induction globally.