Imagine yourself sitting in a maths class, where your teacher is explaining a key concept, you find all the students are nodding their heads in agreement, but somehow you are not able to understand the explanation? How would you feel? Have you experienced a similar situation?
Let’s try another one. Has your child expressed some sort of disappointment over not being able to understand his homework or inability to answer a question in the class lately? Well, whether we accept it or not, there have been instances where children do face such situations occasionally. On the other hand, since each child is taking and understanding things at his own pace, it would not be possible for every teacher to match the pace of each one in the class always. Thankfully, the limitless potential of technology has resolved this problem by introducing the Ed-tech platforms that offer one-to-one personalized learning facilities to children, graduates as well as exam-aspirants. The ed-tech start-ups have emerged as a key business industry in India with higher growth prospects, with the ed-tech sector estimated to reach a value of $4 billion by 2025.
Among names like Vedantu, Toppr, Extra marks, Leverage Edu, Upgrad, Unacademy, etc. on its list, one name that cannot be definitely left out, is Byju’s. Named after the name of its founder & CEO, Byju Raveendran, this ed-tech start-up was founded in the year 2011 under its name, Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, and has its headquarters in Bangalore, India.
Currently, it is one of the highest valued start-ups with a valuation of $22 Billion (as of March 2022) in the Indian start-up ecosystem and has made its founder the youngest billionaire in India with a net worth of $3.05 billion along with his name entered in the Forbes list of India’s 100 Richest People (2020). Byju has created a business worthy to be studied and therefore included the in the Harvard Business case studies. Interesting no?
About Byju’s –Tagline, Mission & Objectives
The learning application was first launched in the year 2011 with the objective to make the process of teaching & learning fun & entertaining. The tagline states- Come, fall in love with learning! The objective of the Byju’s learning program is to offer online video lectures to children (those studying in classes 1 to 3) and students (studying in classes 4 to 12) and then for people aspiring to sit for competitive exams like IIT – JEE, NEET, CAT, GRE, and GMAT.
The start-up aspires to fill the gaps in the Indian education system and promote self-learning among students by making the process of learning fun & entertaining at the same time, so parents won’t have to push their children to study. The process of learning takes place through forms such as quizzes, exercises, visualizations, and much more than just theoretical knowledge.
The teaching content is delivered to the students in various BYJUs motive is though accessible to anyone, but they primarily focus on students which are addicted to learning and thus are more probable to get better results. Since, the launch of the Byju’s application in the year 2015, the application has met with tremendous success and boasts of more than 15 million students all over the world and has 9, 00,000 paid subscribers worldwide. The teaching-learning approach includes a combination of re-invention of learning from world-class faculties using proven pedagogical methods and making concepts easier through the personalized learning methods.
Byju’s –Inception & Work Processes
Byju Raveendran was a service engineer working with a UK-based shipping company while possessing amazing teaching skills which he used to help his peers to get into the leading business schools in India (IIM) for CAT preparations. After the initial success, he started teaching his friends on the terrace of their home, having no idea of what the future had in store for him. As he kept gaining popularity for his skills and the success of his students, his teaching centers shifted from terraces to auditoriums and stadiums, which he described as a completely different experience, as he quotes “I believe it is kind of a fan following that takes place during sessions in large auditoriums, but it is not a math class. It needs to be made a math performance”!
Interestingly, despite coming from a family of teachers he never felt any pressure to perform academically well. He was an avid sportsperson who excelled in as many as six sports including Football, Cricket, Badminton, and Table Tennis. However, as luck would have it, he gave the CAT exam just for fun where he scored a 100 percentile on the first attempt. To reassure himself that it was not a sheer case of “Luck by chance”, he again took the exam and yet again scored 100 percentile for the second time. Regardless of this success, he never joined any IIMs.
In one instance, he was organizing workshops having an audience of more than 20,000 students per session from different cities in India till the year 2009. By the year 2011, his friends who graduated from IIMs encouraged him to launch a company, which was incorporated as Think and Learn Pvt Ltd. later the learning app Byju was launched in 2015, as an interactive e-learning application, and the rest is history.
So, how does Byju’s e-learning platform works? Any student accessing the platform has to feed all his details with which he gets a trial period of fifteen days during which he can access the limited learning courses. Once the free trial period ends, the user gets access to advanced levels of learning after paying of subscription fee.
Students are asked to attend their enrolled classes used in the app and take up multiple tests with personalized feedback. Classroom sessions are also conducted by IIT/IIM graduates at the nearby centers of the subscriber audiences which is on an expansion mode. The parents of the child are also provided an access to the in-depth analysis and real-time feedback using the parent app.
People Behind Byju’s
i. Byju Raveendran
Byju Raveendran is the founder & the CEO of the start-up that was started in the year 2011. He was born in the small town of Azhikode, in Kerala. After completing his schooling, he completed his B.Tech in (mechanical engineering) from Government Engineering College in Kannur, Kerala, and later worked briefly as a service engineer with a UK-based shipping firm. His passion for teaching and learning inspired him to resign from his current job to finally launch Byju’s in 2011.
ii. Divya Gokulnath
Divya Gokulnath is the executive director & co-founder of Byju’s and has an important role to play as a key educator in the organization. She completed her B.Tech in Biotechnology from National College Jayanagar and R.V College of Engineering, before finally co-founding Byju’s with her husband Byju Raveendran in 2011.
Byju’s- Business & Revenue Model
Essentially, Byju works a freemium model (free +premium) model having offerings to customers for both complimentary and paid (premium) services and the communication is done from business-to-consumer (B2C). This method attracts most of the targeted students, who subscribe from the premium businesses after experiencing the quality of teaching & content services during the trial period.
Primarily, there are three sources of revenue for Byju’s-
i.The first source of revenue is through an App subscription. Once the free trial period of fifteen days is over, students need to purchase the premium course to get access to complete content on the app that includes a variety of test series, courses, etc. which compels people to make purchases.
ii. Secondly. Byju offers electronic tablets which the customers need to procure to start learning through the course and contains all the material i.e. videos, tests, practice questions, quizzes, etc. relating to that course.
iii. Thirdly, Byju offers classroom teaching facilities to its students which are for the time being restricted to a limited number of cities and places.
Byju- Major Funding & Acquisitions
Fundings Received Till Date
The ed-tech giant Byju received its latest tranche of funding from three investors including Sumeru Ventures, Vitruvian Partners, and BlackRock, had collectively invested a total sum of $400 mn, whereas the founder Byju Raveendran had infused the remaining $400 mn, making it an overall funding deal worth $800 mn on March 11, 2022, that reached the net valuation of Byju’s to be $22 bn at the conclusion of the round, making it the highest-valued start-ups in India.
Previously, the ed-tech raised a sum of $1.2 bn through a debt financing round in November 2021, before this, several investors invested a total of $286.61 million (Rs 2200 crores) from more than a dozen investors, on October 4, 2021, that had valued Byju’s, at a market valuation of $18 bn. It also collected an amount equal to $350 million funded by UBS Group, Zoom founder, Blackstone, and around $50 million from IIFL and Maitri Edtech in the Series F funding round.
The Edtech giant was on a funding spree in the year 2021 in which it was able to raise around $2.9 billion in the year 2021 only. It became the 11th start-up to enter the unicorn club in Oct 2018 and the first company in India to receive funding from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan under the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative in 2016.
Acquisitions Till Date
Byju has been hyperactive in the ed-tech market and has aggressively acquired around 19 start-ups beneficial for the diversification of business prospects and spent around $2.4 billion in acquisitions last year. It is said to have made offers to businesses like Vedantu and Unacademy.
Lately, Byju acquired GeoGebra, an Austria-based Math learning start-up having a strong reputation for geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics, and calculus on a simple & user-friendly platform on December 8, 2021, for a whopping sum of $100 mn. GeoGebra has a strong following of a learner community of 100 Mn+ learners across 195+ countries and works intending to make math learning fun and visually appealing.
Additionally, Byju took over the business of yet another learning giant Tynker (in Sept 2021) along with three other major e-learning platforms for competitors including Toppr, Great Learning, and then Whodat around July 2021. The newly acquired Byju Great learning, acquired another recruitment automation company, Superset (February 28, 2022), and Northwest Executive Education on May 10, 2022, for a whopping sum of $100 mn, in a cash and stock deal. All these acquisitions are meant to place Byju in the highest position in the ed-tech market and increase its dominance not only in India but also further its products & services in areas like the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
Further, the Edtech unicorn is said to have in talks to acquire multiple language learning apps Hello English for a valuation of around $25 mn and the term sheets for the deal have been said to be signed already. For those unknown, Hello English is a cloud-based language learning platform that offers the facility of learning multiple languages such as English, Chinese, Portuguese, Turkish, Nepali, Indonesian, Thai, Arabic, Malay, Urdu, Malay, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, etc. The acquisition of Hello English would be highly beneficial for the start-up and will only re-affirm its strong position in the e-learning market.
Byju’s –Competitors and Challenges
Two major challenges are coming in the way for Byju which include–
i. During the free-trial period, only limited courses are available and open for access for a student. But, once the trial period is over, the student needs to pay a subscription fee at the end of the trial period to access the premium content, which is said to have a renewal rate of around 85-89%. According to the founder & CEO, the people need to understand that quality education comes with a price and nothing comes for free.
ii. Secondly, Byju is said to have been struggling to find a partner who could help it with the distribution of its business model on a global level, which is not only from a financial standpoint but also with access to proficient technology.
iii. Thirdly, things have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Byju’s enjoyed a monopoly in the e-learning industry, a large number of ed-tech businesses and competitors have arisen posing challenges for the ed-tech giant namely-
- Unacademy
- Upgrad
- Simplilearn
- Meritnation.com
- ClassPlus
- Khan Academy
- Vedantu
- Meritnation.com
Byju- Unique Value Propositions in Ed-Tech Industry
Provided below are the Unique Value Propositions (USP) of Byju’s-
i. Personalized Learning experience- While other education platforms may just offer content in the form of videos or tutorials, a student subscribing to Byju’s learning programs, could get access to a personalized experience of learning through their ‘knowledge graph’ feature that could help a student to grow at his own pace. It also provides an offline free counseling session for students to help them to select a course of their interests more confidently
ii. Crucial Partners– Byju boasts of having partners such as Tencent Holdings, Chan-Zuckerberg initiative, LightSpeed Ventures, Qatar Investment Holdings, and Sequoia Holdings, who have invested huge sums in the start-up.
iii. Key business Activities– Some of the key business activities of Byju include platform development & management, operations management, IT infrastructure operations management, and managing a huge community of teachers & learners.
iv. Vital Resources-Resources are the important assets necessary for a business to work on a day-to-day basis. The excellent technology infrastructure, interactive graphics technology, lecturers, servers, and IT infrastructure help Byju’s to stand apart from others.
v. Value Propositions– Access to quality education, quality teachers offering personalized learning facilities, engaging content, access to parents to track the education of their child, etc. come under the value propositions of BYJUs.
vi. Customer Relationships– BYJUs establishes a direct & effective chain of communication with the students & their parents through its mobile application & online platform, virtual classes, direct meetings, and calls.
vii. Social Media Marketing Strategies– Initially Byju relied on traditional marketing methods such as TV ads and commercials for which it signed Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan as its brand ambassador. However, later it also focused on establishing a strong social media presence out of its robust digital marketing strategies. Now, it maintains an active presence on YouTube, Facebook page, web, and mobile app with a monthly keyword search of 368,000 searches per month.
viii. Varied sources of Revenue Generation– BYJUs follows a freemium business model, and a large portion of revenue comes from the subscription fee paid by the students & learners. Besides, it also earns revenues from other sources such as product purchases from its online website & offline career counseling, offline coaching, and revenues from API.
Byju’s- Growth & Future Plans
Since its launch in the year 2011, Byju has registered a robust presence in the Indian market which is stronger than ever along with its acquired businesses like Aakash Education and White hat Jr. gaining instant popularity among the Indian masses. Accordingly, Byju is known to enjoy a following of more than 150 million registered users on its platform with a higher renewal rate of around 86%. From reporting net revenue of 439 crores in FY18, which amounted to Rs. 1341 crores in FY19 and has reached Rs 2,381 crore in FY20, which indicates an 82.31% surge in revenue from operations.
Now, with newly acquired businesses in USA & Europe, Byju is eyeing to gain its presence in Middle Eastern, Europe, and African countries among other global markets. It has already started its efforts by acquiring US-based learning platform Osmo (January 2019) and entered a tie-up with Disney to launch an early learning app for classes 1-3.
It has also partnered with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) intending to start a new ed-tech business & R&D center in the Doha region of Qatar. The program is expected to bring innovation & build cutting-edge learning solutions which will be personalized for students in the Middle East, and North African students, belonging to the MENA region.
The ed-tech giant is neither behind in understanding its social responsibility towards contributing to the lagging education sector in the country. It also played a key positive step during the COVID-19 crisis during the pandemic as schools were shut down, it offered the learning programs free of cost till April 2020 for the students to enjoy continuous learning. It has entered a partnership with the Niti Aayog under the aegis of the program “Education for All” which aims to foster a quality experience of learning for worthy students through tech-driven workshops that have been expanded to children across 112 aspirational districts (districts that are developmentally challenged across various sectors like food& nutrition, education, agriculture, skill development, infrastructure, etc).
It also aims to identify & offer coaching services to 3,000 meritorious students of classes 11 and 12, who aspire to appear for NEET and JEE, and offer academic content with the help of BYJU’S Learning App for the school children studying in classes 6-12 standards for three years with the help of the Aakash+BYJU’S Career-Plus program.
The ed-tech unicorn start-up is also planning to grow & expand its offline presence among various cities and towns in India under its hybrid learning model known as Byju Tuition Centre. This program will target students studying in classes between 4-10 offering coaching services for subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry. The all-new hybrid model of education has already been kick-started from Oct 2021, if it meets with success, it will make the Edtech decacorn scale it up around the nation.
Presently, the Byju tuition centers are running on a pilot model in around 23 cities and 80 centers which it aims to expand 500 BTCs in 200 cities in India by the end of the year 2022 by infusing a capital sum of $200 mn and is targeting around 1mn students for such business model. Thus, it could be concluded that Byju has truly reformed the Indian education sector through a revolution in educational schemes and teaching methods, and now with the launch of offline centers across cities in the country, life has come full circle for them.
Lastly, Byju is also preparing for its debut in the Indian stock market by binging its IPO issue by the end of the year 2022 at a valuation above $16.8 billion. Likewise, it has decided to merge with the special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) of Churchill Capital, a global strategic advisory firm, and raise around $4 bn. If the merger progresses, the IPO round will further raise the total valuation of the business which will go above $48 bn reportedly. It seems Byju is ready to create yet another record of its kind in the history of the Indian business industry.
