Real Estate Prices Behind Skyrocketing School Fees, Says Zoho's Sridhar Vembu

“Education has become increasingly unaffordable. A good part of it due to urban real estate (and even real estate around small towns) becoming extremely expensive," Vembu wrote in his post on X

Sreedhar Vembu, the billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of Zoho, has highlighted in one of his social media posts on X(formerly Twitter) that one of the primary reasons behind the high costs of school fees is the expensive real estate market in rural areas and towns. He explained that this issue extends beyond education, impacting various sectors, including housing, retail, and healthcare. 

Vembu stressed that the inflated property values in these areas contribute significantly to the overall costs associated with these essential services.

“Education has become increasingly unaffordable. A good part of it due to urban real estate (and even real estate around small towns) becoming extremely expensive;  that affects education, health care and of course, housing and retail as well,” he wrote on X while responding to Aviral Bhatnagar, a venture capitalist based in Bengaluru, who had mentioned that kindergarten fees in Hyderabad have now reached Rs 3.7 lakh per year.

“A lot of corruption money from politics is "parked" in real estate, and that has inflated prices beyond normal market forces. In a sense, all of us pay for political corruption in the form of expensive housing, schools and health care. We are investing in school education to make it affordable (our schools are free) but we can only do it in deep rural areas where land is affordable,” Vembu added.

According to the image, the man was required to pay a non-refundable registration fee of Rs 10,000. In addition, there was an annual fee of Rs 25,000 that recurs each year and Rs 98,750 for each of the four three-month terms running from April 2024 to March 2025.

At the same time, a real estate consultant in Gurugram shared that he is currently paying Rs 30,000 per month for his Class 3 son's school fees. He noted that the school authorities have been increasing the fees annually and have yet to provide an explanation to parents. The consultant further highlighted that if the CBSE school continues to raise its fees by 10 per cent each year, he would face a yearly fee of approximately Rs 9,00,000 by the time his son reaches Class 12.