Story of Raveendran Byju:

Entrepreneur by chance and a teacher by choice.

Imagine you are sitting in a packed class, and the teacher is explaining an important concept. While it's seeming that everyone else is understanding the concept, but it is simply getting bounced off your head. Does this sound familiar? Well, it happens to most of us at least once in our student life.

Thankfully, the ed-tech sector is growing fast enough to fill this gap. And talking about ed-tech in India, one name that we surely don't afford to miss is Byju’s.

Today, BYJU’S is one of those instantly recognized Indian brands that is making its presence not just within the country but also internationally. The start-up is India’s only EdTech unicorn.

BYJUs is a platform which was created by Byju Raveendran. BYJU’S app was developed by Think and Learn Pvt Ltd in 2011. It is a platform for the teachers to teach and students to learn different educational concepts through the app and understand them better. It mainly focuses on mathematics and science.

Byju Raveendran is an Indian and belongs from Azhikode, a small coastal village in Kerala. He was initially working in a UK based shipping company as an engineer.

In 2003, during his two months break from an overseas job as a service engineer, Byju decided to help some of his friends appearing for CAT in Bangalore. It was an informal way of helping them, and he himself also appeared for the exam and scored 100 percentile. He started teaching some of his friends, and took up the test yet again in 2005 without any preparation, and scored a perfect 100 percentile again. This time he also appeared for IIM-A, B, C interviews and cleared all of them. However, decided against pursuing an MBA and instead saw potential in teaching students how to crack CAT. It was just by chance, that he took the entrepreneurial path, but teaching was a choice he made.

Slowly and steadily, the number of students grew through word of mouth. In 2007 he used to teach over 1000 students in an auditorium

Back then, even in the offline format with classrooms with a large capacity no interaction was possible. So, to visualise and conceptualise became byju's strength. They grew from Bangalore to 9 cities. Raveendran would travel to 9 cities in a week to teach and this continued till 2009.

Eventually, they switched over entirely to recorded classes, with a “mentor” present to answer doubts after the video. This is how they operate today for many of their test prep batches. But it was in 2011 that he formed the company, Byju’s, with the help of some of his students who had graduated from IIMs.

BYJU’S shifted from teaching only for exam-taking classes (10+, 12+, CAT etc) to teaching students across age groups. This was integral for the brand’s evolution from a test and exam prep teaching model to teaching and learning for students across age groups.

It was in 2011 that they started creating core learning products, which are today a part of the app-based format.

The team took almost four years, starting from 2011, to create the kind of high-quality content that is now available on the learning app, and build the brand that is BYJU’S.

One reason the online learning app has flourished is also because of its diverse and distinguished content. The format of its video lessons is highly engaging, with a healthy mix of animation, gamification, and live action formats.

Since the launch of the online app, BYJU’S has grown rapidly. In 2018, the company achieved a major milestone, raising funding from Tencent and BCCL and becoming India’s 11th unicorn company with a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Earlier this year, BYJU’S announced that it has tripled its revenue to Rs 1,430 crore in FY19, and also turned profitable on a full year basis. The key factors behind this growth in revenue were said to be “deeper penetration across India and significant growth in the number of paid subscribers”.

BYJUs motive doesn’t only focus on the students who are interested and motivated to learn instead focuses on everyone, being unbiased.

The primary goal of BYJUs is to bridge the gap between the Indian education system and help the students fall in love with what they learn.

-Author :Paritosh Gaikwad

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