A few years ago, “tablet courses” were the big buzzword in Indian edtech. Coaching institutes and startups rushed to sell Android tablets bundled with preloaded video lectures. Many even repeated the experiment with “pendrive courses.”

The pitch sounded innovative:

• “Buy our tablet, and you get all the lectures offline.”
• “No internet needed, everything is preloaded.”
• “A premium device + premium content.”

In practice? It failed. And it failed for good reasons.

1. Students Never Asked for a Tablet

Most students already had a phone or access to one in the family. What they wanted was good content that worked on the devices they already owned.

Forcing them to buy an extra tablet was:

• Expensive — tablets were marked up far beyond their actual hardware cost
• Redundant — students didn’t want or need another screen
• Wasteful — the “extra” device often ended up gathering dust

2. Locked-Down Devices = Bad Experience

To protect their “content,” companies locked down these tablets:

• Disabled app installs
• Disabled general browsing
• Sometimes even locked storage

The result? A frustrating experience. Students paid a high price for a device that couldn’t even do the basics a normal tablet should. Instead of empowering learners, these tablets restricted them.

3. Video-Only ≠ Edtech

At the end of the day, these tablet courses were just recorded video lectures repackaged. No interactivity. No personalization. No community.

It wasn’t edtech. It was a digital version of old-school correspondence courses — with a much higher price tag.

4. Smartphones Are the Real “Default Device”

A good smartphone is still a luxury in many Indian households. For students, it’s not just a study device — it’s their:

• Communication hub
• Entertainment device
• Social connection
• Daily organizer

Edtech needs to respect that reality. Instead of forcing students to buy a device they didn’t ask for, we should focus on making apps and websites that:

• Run smoothly on entry-level phones
• Work with limited data and storage
• Are intuitive for first-time users

That’s real accessibility.

5. The Second Device Should Be a Laptop, Not a Tablet

If there’s one extra device worth aspiring to, it’s not a tablet — it’s a laptop.

Why?

• A tablet is mostly a consumption device (watching, reading, browsing)
• A laptop is a creation device (coding, designing, writing, editing)
• Laptops open doors to future careers — from programming to video editing to design
• Laptops last longer — even a decade or more — compared to phones/tablets, which become obsolete in 2–3 years

For students, the jump from phone → laptop is far more empowering than phone → tablet.

6. Lessons Learned

The “tablet course” fad shows what happens when edtech companies chase short-term business gimmicks instead of focusing on student needs.

• Students don’t need locked-down devices.
• They don’t need overpriced tablets with preloaded videos.
• They don’t need pendrives full of lectures.

What they need are:

• Apps and websites that run well on the phones they already have
• Content that is interactive, affordable, and effective
• Tools that help them not just learn, but also create and grow

Final Thought

Edtech should be about empowering students, not trapping them in hardware bundles. The industry must stop thinking of students as “customers to be locked in” and start thinking of them as learners to be set free.

At Redpapr, we believe in building technology that adapts to the student’s life, not the other way around. Because the future of learning isn’t in selling tablets or pendrives. It’s in making learning accessible, effective, and meaningful — on the devices students already trust.