BYJU’s is an Indian edtech company that has rapidly grown to become one of the most successful startups in the country. Founded by Byju Raveendran in 2011, the company provides online courses and learning tools for K-12 students. What started as a one-man show has now become a billion-dollar company, attracting investments from some of the world’s most prestigious investors.
Byju Raveendran, the founder of BYJU’s, is a former teacher and a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), who found his passion for teaching while helping his friends prepare for the Common Admission Test (CAT), a highly competitive exam for admission into India’s top business schools. Raveendran’s teaching methods were so effective that his friends began referring him to others, and soon he found himself teaching thousands of students across India through in-person classes.
However, Raveendran realized that he could reach even more students by leveraging technology. He began recording his classes and uploading them to YouTube, where they quickly gained a following. In 2011, he launched BYJU’s as an online coaching platform for CAT and other competitive exams. The platform offered video lessons, practice quizzes, and other learning resources that helped students prepare for exams in a more engaging and interactive way.
However, BYJU’s truly took off in 2015 when it shifted its focus to K-12 education. Raveendran realized that there was a huge gap in the Indian education system, with students struggling to keep up with the demands of the curriculum and teachers struggling to engage students. He saw an opportunity to use technology to make learning more fun, interactive, and effective.
BYJU’s launched its first K-12 learning app in 2015, which provided video lessons, interactive quizzes, and games to help students learn concepts in a more engaging way. The app was an instant hit, with millions of students downloading it within the first few months of launch. The company continued to innovate, adding new features like live classes, personalized learning plans, and AI-based assessments to make the learning experience even better.
One of the key factors behind BYJU’s success is its focus on creating high-quality content. The company has a team of more than 1,000 content creators who work to create videos, animations, and other learning resources that are engaging, interactive, and easy to understand. The content is designed to cater to different learning styles, ensuring that students can learn at their own pace and in their own way.
Another factor behind BYJU’s success is its marketing strategy. The company has invested heavily in marketing, using celebrity endorsements, television commercials, and social media campaigns to build its brand and attract new customers. BYJU’s has partnered with cricketers like Virat Kohli and Mahendra Singh Dhoni to promote its brand, and has run ad campaigns featuring popular Bollywood actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone.
BYJU’s has also been successful in attracting funding from some of the world’s most prestigious investors. The company has raised more than $1.5 billion in funding from investors like Tencent, Sequoia Capital, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. This has allowed the company to expand its operations and launch new products, including a learning app for competitive exams and an international version of its K-12 app.
Today, BYJU’s is one of the most valuable startups in India, with a valuation of more than $16.5 billion. The company has more than 80 million registered users, and has been downloaded more than 100 million times. BYJU’s has also expanded internationally, launching its app in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
