Innovation

Byju’s – The Learning App was launched by Byju Raveendran in the year 2015, and within one year the app had 5.5 million downloads with 2,500,000 plus students using it on an annual subscription basis. The idea is to reinvent how students learn and transform learning into fun by their learning classes and the learning app. With a strong content team of 150 members, a 200-member media team makes it into interesting videos, and a technology team of 150 personalises it. In all they have a 500-member product development team.

Byju's learning app is exclusively designed for students who dream about scoring more marks but whose minds never give space to take a book and read, who sleep in the class during boring lectures, who want to visualize what they are learning, who want to learn on the go, who want to understand the concept better than their school subject teachers and who want to be successful in academics.

Inspiration

Byju Raveendran, before starting Byju's, worked at a multinational shipping firm as a service engineer. During one of his vacations, he helped a few of his friends with the preparation for the CAT examination, and appeared for it himself, securing hundred percentile. This further led to more and more people coming to him for tuitions, and he eventually started taking classes in different cities. Demand for his classes grew so much that he started his own video lectures using V-SAT to reach forty-five cities. Byju realised that students lacked conceptual clarity in their fundamentals because of which their improvement rate was around seven percent instead of ten percent, which is what he expected. To remedy that, he decided to create reading material for school students starting from class four. The concepts that were taught helped thousands of students across India. Finally, as Byju's' popularity grew day in and day out, Byju's learning app was launched in 2015 and became an instant hit in the market.

Overall impact

Byju's has made a positive impact on the learning environment in India today. At Byju's, their approach is to make learning an enjoyable experience for students, and not something which they carry as a burden. BYJU'S has emerged as an educational technology company, with a focus on online operations. The online app provides video tutorials which help in easy understanding of the concepts, which develops students' interest in the subject. That is imperative as without interest, a good understanding of concepts is not possible. Also, with the help of the application, Byju's penetration in the market has increased exponentially, reaching the previously unreachable customers. Most of the content on the application is free, which further makes the students happy about wanting the application and has worked towards increasing its popularity. Its objective is to get incorporated in school curriculums so that students develop an interest in studies since the very beginning, which is the company's vision.

Business benefit

India has become the second largest market for e-learning after the US. The sector is currently pegged at US$ 2 billion and is expected to reach US$ 5.7 billion by 2020. The distance education market in India is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of around 11 percent during 2016-2020. Moreover, the aim of the government to raise its current gross enrollment ratio to 30 percent by 2020 will also boost the growth of the distance education in India.

The education sector in India is poised to witness major growth in the years to come as India will have the world’s largest tertiary-age population and second largest graduate talent pipeline globally by the end of 2020. The education market in India is currently valued at US$ 100 billion and is expected to nearly double to US$ 180 billion by 2020.* Currently, the school segment is valued at US$ 52 billion and contributes 52 percent to the education market in India; higher education contributes 15 percent of the market size; text-book, e-learning and allied services contribute 28 percent; and vocational education in manufacturing and services contributes 5 percent. The higher education system in India has undergone rapid expansion. Currently, India’s higher education system is the largest in the world, enrolling over 70 million students, while in less than two decades, India has managed to create additional capacity for over 40 million students. It witnesses spending of over Rs 46,200 crore (US$ 6.93 billion).

"A business cannot be driven by the passion to make money, the passion to change society is far more important."
"After a certain point, what value has money to a person?"- Byju Raveendran

With $140 million investment, Byju’s Think & Learn is now the largest funded edtech startup in India. Since 2007, private equity investors have injected a total of US$ 1.1 billion in the Indian education sector, according to a report by Kaizen equity fund. Investors do not hesitate to bet on the edtech sector as it is recession-proof. The report says, “The years 2010 and 2011 have witnessed highest investments in the education sector. With 14 exits since 2007, private equity investments in the education sector have returned a healthy 21.5 percent IRR. Moreover, education has outperformed other counter-cyclical assets, such as gold (14.12 percent IRR). Most of these exits were secondary and strategic sales.”

Byju is now, in a sense, competing with US-based global edtech companies like Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy, and HotChalk, which at $235 million is US’s highest funded edtech company that was started in 2004. The title of highest edtech company worldwide, however, goes to China. It’s iTutorGroup stands backed with $315 million funding.

The company has grown at a phenomenal pace when it registered a revenue growth of Rs 120 crore in 2015-2016 from Rs 4 crore in 2011-2012. Byju says, “We have seen an exponential growth in revenue from Rs 4 crore in FY12, Rs 12 crore in FY13, Rs 20 crore in FY14, Rs 48 crore in FY15, and Rs 120 crores in FY16. We expect to grow at the rate of 2.5X in 2017.”

Social and environmental benefit

The company fundamentals are clear as crystal, no matter what domain we try segmenting out. “You work you move forward, you don’t work you are left behind” is the ideology that is prevalent in the entire employee fraternity. Out of all the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals the ones that are most focused are:

1. Quality Education

The primary aim of Byju’s classes is to elevate the standard of understanding and reach of education to all students. The organisation opts for best practices in the industry to roll out its programmes (compiled video lectures for specific courses) via digital mediums. There has already been an increase of 3 percentage points in the performance level of students who have taken Byju’s application as a medium to learn.

2. Gender Equality

The company employees feel very comfortable and perfectly amalgamated in the organisation culture since the entire company is performance driven. Your work creates your identity in the organisation, not your gender.

3. Decent Work and Economic Growth

"A business cannot be driven by the passion to make money, the passion to change society is far more important."
"After a certain point, what value has money to a person?"- Byju Raveendran

When the company’s founder follows this ideology then it is completely obvious of the fact that the institution solely works for the people and the society.

Interview

Shruti Sadashivan, Business Development Leader