Case Study | 23 July 2025
How Research Nester Delivered Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking Services for an EdTech SaaS Platform to Promote Its Market Presence and User Engagement
Posted by : Preeti Wani
An emerging cloud-based education platform wanted to expand its services in less popular regions while adapting to an evolving digital learning landscape. The company approached Research Nester to recognize competitive gaps, improve user engagement, and stay ahead in the EdTech race.
An overview:
A growing EdTech software provider teamed up with Research Nester to take its cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) into emerging international markets. The company was facing typical expansion hurdles such as adjusting pricing for different regions, matching competitor features, and boosting user engagement in unfamiliar territories. To navigate these challenges, it approached Research Nester for strategic support. Research Nester carried out an in-depth study of the competitive landscape, examining EdTech trends, user preferences, and leading market players across more than 20 countries. The research included a long-term market outlook through 2031, which predicted a 14.7% annual growth rate for the sector and highlighted a growing demand for mobile-first platforms and blended learning solutions.
By evaluating 12 major competitors and delivering actionable insights into pricing models, user behavior, and market sentiment, Research Nester enabled the client to improve its product offerings, tailor pricing to regional needs, build local partnerships, and reposition its brand. These efforts led to a 25% increase in user engagement and a 30% rise in subscriptions in markets like Southeast Asia and Africa. This collaboration demonstrates how focused market research and competitive benchmarking can help EdTech companies overcome expansion barriers and succeed on a global scale.
The Story
The company is a mid-sized software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider specializing in digital learning tools for higher education institutions and vocational learners. Their flagship product, a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS), combines AI-driven personalized learning, live virtual classrooms, and integrated assessment modules. Although initially launched in North America, the company found out the growing demand for e-learning in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The leadership team had one clear goal, i.e., to expand their LMS platform into new international markets while optimizing their existing product to stay competitive. However, the company soon realized that entering global EdTech markets wasn’t just about translating content or offering freemium plans. They needed to analyze what features were in demand, what gaps competitors had not addressed, and what pricing models were sustainable across different regions.
With these objectives in mind, the company partnered with Research Nester, a globally reputed market research and consulting firm, to perform a thorough competitive landscape analysis and offer benchmarking insights. The purpose was to establish what market leaders were doing right, how customer expectations were evolving, and how to strategically match their platform roadmap with future demands.
Our Solution:
The Research Nester team kicked off the engagement by conducting a comprehensive market assessment focused on EdTech usage trends, regulatory environments, and user preferences across targeted regions. The team also analyzed macroeconomic indicators, digital infrastructure readiness, and mobile internet penetration factors that strongly affect SaaS education platforms.
Based on the collected information, Research Nester developed a market forecast for the 2023-2031 period, explaining expected growth in e-learning adoption across 20+ countries. The forecast depicted:
- A CAGR of 14.7% in the global EdTech sector between 2023 and 2031.
- Rapidly expanding opportunities in mobile-driven education ecosystems.
- High demand for hybrid solutions combining offline and online content.
- The forecast helped the company identify high-priority regions with less crowded markets and high mobile accessibility. Additionally, Research Nester recommended investing in localized content, adaptive learning algorithms, and collaborative learning tools as core differentiators for the next growth phase.
Entering new global markets is itself a hurdle. However, one of the biggest issues was assessing regional pricing sensitivities and tailoring the LMS accordingly. Unlike their home market, where institutions paid licensing fees yearly, many regions preferred scalable, pay-as-you-go models or revenue-sharing systems. Another challenge was about feature parity and user interface expectations. Competing products in specific markets that had high gamified learning experiences and offline sync capabilities, while the client’s platform lagged in these areas. Additionally, the company faced difficulty in benchmarking its service standards in the absence of a unified global metric for LMS efficiency and engagement. Most internal KPIs were relevant to their North American user base but failed to capture success across different linguistic, cultural, and technical landscapes.
Research Nester helped solve these challenges by offering:
- A comparative analysis chart consisting of 12 top EdTech competitors worldwide.
- Breakdown of feature adoption and usage analytics across markets.
- Competitor pricing tiers and their corresponding engagement statistics.
- Voice of customer analysis gathered via sentiment tracking and social listening tools.
By understanding both what worked and what did not in the competitive space, the company was able to redefine its platform roadmap with more confidence.
Results
The engagement with Research Nester resulted in several key outcomes as mentioned below.
- Streamlined Features Based on Benchmarking Data: The platform consisted of multilingual support, gamified quizzes, and mobile-first interfaces on the basis of top-requested features detected in Research Nester’s user behavior audit. This led to a 25% rise in user engagement within the first six months of relaunch in new markets.
- Geo-Specific Pricing Models: Research Nester's pricing intelligence study helped the company in executing region-specific pricing services, assuring accessibility without compromising profitability. This move directly contributed to a 30% rise in subscriptions in Southeast Asia and Africa within the first quarter of launch.
- Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations: With help from Research Nester’s competitive intelligence report, the company recognized local content providers and education ministries in three countries for partnerships. These collaborations enabled faster market penetration while adding credibility in new regions.
- Long-Term Growth Planning: The company also received a 12-quarter growth roadmap with milestone targets, market-specific challenges, and go-to-market strategies. Armed with this data, the leadership team created an expansion blueprint that was both aggressive and grounded in market realities.
- Brand Positioning and Differentiation Approach: With Research Nester’s competitive strategy, the client rebranded itself as an AI-powered education partner for students, focusing on employability and personalized learning outcomes, something their other competitors had not emphasized in emerging markets.
Conclusion
After partnering with Research Nester, the client transformed from being a mid-tier LMS provider in an overcrowded market to becoming a globally popular, user-centric education platform. The Research Nester analysts played a huge role in reshaping the company’s understanding of global market dynamics, customer behavior, and future innovation trends.
By providing customized competitive intelligence, robust benchmarking frameworks, and an in-depth forecast model, Research Nester helped the company to reduce uncertainty in strategic decisions, preemptively address roadblocks in international scaling, and create a scalable, future-ready SaaS product. Today, the company is not only growing revenue-wise but is also known for its effect on democratizing education through affordable and intelligent digital solutions. This case exemplifies how strategic market intelligence combined with actionable benchmarking can serve as a powerful growth engine for any tech company entering uncharted territory.
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