BYJU STARTUP - VPmarketing

BYJU STARTUP

Byju Raveendran Built A $5.5 Billion Business With His EdTech Startup

Byju Raveendran, Founder of Byju’s said,

“My experience with graduate students made me realize that you can make a bigger impact if you can make an intervention in the way students learn in their formative years.”

“We’ve created students who are addicted to learning, and therein lies the secret to our success,”

BYJU’S The Learning App (BYJU’s) is India’s largest K-12 education app with about 300,000 annual paid subscribers.

The mobile app uses a mix of video lessons and interactive tools to personalize learning for every student.

INTRODUCTION:-

BYJU'S – The Learning App is the common brand name for Think and Learn Private Ltd., a Bangalore-based educational technology (EdTech) and online tutoring firm founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran at Bangalore (India).

 In March 2019, it became the world’s most valued edtech company at $5.4 billion (Rs 37,000 crore).

In January 2020, the company was valued at $8 billion (Rs 57,000 crore).

 Shah Rukh Khan is the brand ambassador for BYJU'S. In July 2019, BYJU'S acquired Indian cricket team's jersey rights.

Byju is an e-learning platform founded in 2015 by Think and Learn Pvt Ltd.

keeping the focus on primary and secondary school education in India.

It was founded by Byju Raveendran who himself was a teacher for various competitive exams.

Byju app has more 3 lakh annual paid subscriber.

It was founded and started by Byju Raveendran in 2011 & was first Asian company to be funded by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

 Its major competitor was Khan’s Academy, who were following the same services provided by Byju’s.

Byju’s was born out of the need for high-quality and a more accessible way of learning.

Based in India, Byju’s offers original content, watch-and-learn videos, rich animations and interactive simulations through its app which makes learning a lot more fun and easy to understand.

Byju’s, which seeks to change the way students learn, offers programmes for children from Classes IV to XII, besides preparing graduates for competitive exams—CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT. The focus is on making learning visual and contextual, rather than just theoretical.

The startup leverages technology and data to offer personalized lessons.”

Byju’s started out with classroom teaching, however, Raveendran was keen to formulate technology oriented learning methodology to make learning visual and contextual, as a result it emerged as an educational technology company.

Raveendran's wife, Divya Gokulnath, 33 is cofounder and a director on Byju's board. 

BYJUs-founder-Byju-Raveendran

Raveendran, 38, is the son of teachers.

 After earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in Kerala, India, he took a job in Singapore in 2001 as a globetrotting engineer at a shipping company.

During trips back home, he helped friends prepare for the ultra-competitive admission test for India’s elite business schools, the Indian Institutes of Management.

Just for fun, he took the exam twice himself, scoring in the top 1% each time.

In 2005, Raveendran quit his job and returned to India to teach business-school applicants full-time.

Within six weeks, he had 1,200 students.

He soon started traveling to nine cities. But by 2009 he started broadcasting lessons via satellite.

Raveendran soon realized that his aspiring business-school students were struggling with math and science that they should have learned at a much earlier age.

To help redress that gap, in 2011 he launched Think & Learn, the company that is Byju’s parent.

In no time Byju classes have become so popular that he left his job and became a full-time tutor for competitive exams.

Then is 2015 he launched Byju app for competitive exams.

Byju’s has become the rage among students across India, enrolling 35 million to its math 

Byju Raveendran got the first inkling he might have a future in education as a teenager tutoring 11th and 12th graders clamoring for his help to pass their exams.

Back then, he was just an 8th grade math whiz. Today, he’s a billionaire.

In 2006, Raveendran launched what has turned into the world’s most valuable education technology business, Byju’s.

From its start offering test-prep classes, Byju’s has become the rage among students across India, enrolling 35 million to its math and science tutoring app.

In July, it received funding from a group of investors that included Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and valued it at $5.5 billion—and Raveendran has a 26% stake in the company.

Problem Statement

Education sector in India- Overview Technology

The population of India is 1.3 Billion, where 30% of the population goes to school.

Nearly 25% of the students in India are not going to school regularly. Reason behind this is the students are unable to understand the concepts.

In rural side, many untrained teachers are been appointed, where their teaching method is not up to the mark.

In order to provide the best education, Indian parents are sacrificing their needs and spending their income majority on their children.

 Indian parents have concluded that providing education in big schools makes their children to learn and understand the concepts easily.

Apart from schooling, many Indian parents are forcing their children to attend tuition classes where they think that attending tuition classes helps them to score more marks.

He realized that Indians follow traditional method of learning, which was more emphasized by teachers and their parents.

Indian education system was given much importance to the students studying in 10th & 12th Standard, which was thought to be changing path in their education.

Raveendran realized the opportunity to bring the new way of teachings in the Indian education system.

This made him to footmark his business in USA. 

 With multiple players in the industry, providing effective individualized learning is a challenge

 Standard questions and a set of standard solutions are very common

How did Byju’s make use of Data Science to tackle the same

India appears fertile ground for edtech:

the country has 260 million school-age children struggling through a system rife with poorly qualified teachers in an increasingly tech-savvy economy starving for skilled workers.

“You have here a proliferation of smartphones, almost-free bandwidth, ubiquitous internet access and ease of digital payments,” says Krishnan Ganesh, who cofounded the online education company TutorVista in 2005, then sold it to U.K.-based Pearson in 2011,

before Byju’s bought part of it from Pearson in 2017. “And you have parents who will spend a disproportionate amount of their disposable income on education.”

Products and services

BYJU’S runs on a premium model. Their main product is a mobile app named BYJU'S-The Learning App launched in August 2015.

 It provides educational content mainly to school students from class 1 to 12 (primary to higher secondary level education).

The company trains students for examinations in India such as IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, CSE as well as for international examinations such as GRE and GMAT.

The main focus is on mathematics and science, where concepts are explained using 12-20 minute digital animation videos.

BYJU'S reports to have 33 million users overall, 2.2 million annual paid subscribers and an annual retention rate of about 85%.

The app purports to tailor the content provided to the individual student’s learning pace and style.

The average student spends 53 minutes daily using BYJU'S.

Apart from mathematics and science they have introduced Disney BYJU'S app for kids who had just started learning.

The company announced that it will launch its app in regional Indian languages in 2019.

 It also plans to launch an international version of the app for English-speaking students in other countries in 2019.

PROGRESS / GROWTH

In August 2015, after 4 years of developments, the firm launched BYJU’S The Learning App.

The app was downloaded by more than 2 million students within the first 3 months since its launch.

 In December 2016, the app was among "Best Self Improvement" apps at Google Play India rating.

In 2017, Think and Learn launched BYJU’S Math App for kids and BYJU’S Parent Connect app to help parents track their child’s learning course.

 BYJU’S app also became a business case at Harvard Business School.

By 2018, it had 15 million users and 900,000 paid users.

Challenges

With the level of growth, it was evident that Byju’s needed more manpower to handle its daily operations.

Currently, Byju’s has 1000+ employees actively working under its gable.

“As the no. of inquiries and orders increased, we were required to employ resources who could handle customer inquiries, maintain accounts for the daily financial transactions and manage to package.

We employed around 1000+ employees that are spread across the Sales, Finance & Logistic departments.”

Byju’s has appointed 200+ sales representatives to handle customer inquiries and demonstrate the products. However, there was no real-time tracking of sales activity conducted by these salespersons.

The Sales managers were not able to track the daily activities conducted by their respective sales reps.

As a result, they didn’t have detailed insights into the sales conversions which directly impacts the revenue graph.

The Logistic team was spending more time in delivering the orders as there was no system available by which they could keep a track of the shipped, delivered & unfulfilled orders.

The finance department was devoid of information/references on the payments made.

The support department was facing hassles in resolving customer queries due to lack of updated and organized information about customer orders & issues.

The entire process between lead generation & lead fulfillment wasn’t streamlined.

As the organization structure got more refined, employees across different departments needed access to a standardized format of information to keep the fulfillment process aligned.

However, Byju’s also wanted to restrict the access to information by the user’s role.

Going by this requirement, Orderhive Enterprise designed the concept of role-based dashboards.

Procedural Challeneges

To know whether the order is PAID or UNPAID.

To identify the mode of Payment opted by the customer.

Check the discounted price offered to the customer before confirming the order.

Seek clarification from the Sales team regarding any payment queries.

Aligning the Logistic workflow

Shipping Status & Workflow – From a single Interface, the logistic team can pick, ship, deliver and track orders.

Every order has a shipping status indicated by a specific icon. The icons are automatically updated according to the current status of the order.

 What is the Byju’s business model?

Byju’s is following Freemium business model.

Freemium allows users to access the company essentials for free at a given days.

After certain amount of days it requests users to choose the premium plans to further continue the services.

This business model is mainly followed by the start-ups to grab the customers towards them, it’s a kind of indirect marketing by the company.

 Byju’s used to teach lessons to the students through their innovative videos, which helped them to learn and understand quickly. 

Here the data collected by the Byju’s was till what time the video was viewed properly by the student without of rewinding back.

Upon this the students had access to comment on those videos whether they liked or disliked the video.

This made them to improvise in further videos, chatbots were used in the app where the 24/7 helpline was provided to the students to clarify the doubts.

Hence Byju’s used to collect and use the data strategically.

Byju’s has raised more money than any other edtech startup. 

In 2015, Byju’s released its first app, a math and science tutor for 6th to 12th graders and followed it up two years later with one for 4th and 5th graders.

 In addition to providing video lessons, the app gauges whether the student has understood the concepts.

Based on the response, the app takes the student either to the next level or back to basics.

“This is what teachers can never do,  “They’re unable to assess how much each student has really understood any topic.”

SUCCESS & COMPITITION

Within three months of launching, the app had been downloaded two million times.

 Today, Byju’s has enrolled 35 million students, with 2.4 million paying between $150 to $200 each for an annual subscription.

Byju’s $200 million in annual sales is still tiny compared to the $3.9 billion at Japan’s Benesse Holdings, Asia’s largest listed education company.

Yet it’s already profitable—earning more than $2 million in its latest fiscal year—and growing fast.

Spurred on by a recent focus on students in smaller cities, Byju’s expects revenue for the year ending next March to more than double to $440 million.

Byju’s inevitably faces a proliferation of challengers, including Vedantu, which is backed by China’s TAL Education Group and offers live, one-on-one tutoring, as well as Toppr, which provides online test preparation.

And while China’s own edtech players—such as VIPKid—are not direct rivals, they compete for the same investment pool.

Byju's is now the fourth most-highly valued startup in India, after mobile payments and e-commerce.

So far, Byju’s has grabbed the largest chunk of money.

In 2016, Byju’s landed $50 million for an undisclosed stake from a group that included U.S. venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan’s Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, marking that fund’s first investment in Asia. In 2017,

 China’s Tencent invested $40 million on its own.

Byju’s is now the fourth most-highly valued startup in India, after mobile payments and e-commerce firm Paytm, hotel operator Oyo and ride-hailing app Ola, after the latest Qatar-led investment round.

Raveendran hopes to stay ahead of the competition by broadening his product offering and expanding into new markets.

This year, Byju’s plans to add English and social sciences to its curriculum. And in January, Raveendran paid $120 million to buy Osmo, a U.S. maker of education games.

 In June, he launched a cobranded app with Disney called the Disney Byju’s Early Learn app, aimed at India’s 5 to 8-year olds.

“We’ll be expanding with more products, more grades and more markets,” he says.

Byju’s is already working to widen its youth appeal: In Bangalore, a team of 1,100 animators, gamers, developers and teachers are developing lessons for tech-savvy 3 to 8-year-olds that feature locally developed animated characters. “They have some X factor which kids like,”

Expansion to US Markets:-

Although there is room to grow exponentially in India, BYJU’s decides to enter the United States and other English speaking international markets.

It believes that the United States has a large demand for “better learning,” a strong digital payment infrastructure, and a willingness to pay subscription fees. 

At the same time, winning in U.S.’s education market, where most students attend public schools and many ed-tech companies are proliferating, is challenging.

Is it wise to expand to the U.S., even though India presents such a vast untapped opportunity with so many students in need?

byju case study

Scope of E-learning In India:

India a country with more 1.25 billion people is the second most populated country in the world with more than 50% of its population is under 30 year of age.

Which means India has approximately 50 million students going to school or preparing for competitive exams.

e-learning in india

But in India, we have huge infrastructure crisis to accommodate this large population and provide them the quality education.

That’s why e-learning platforms like Byju are so popular in India.

Using these platforms you can get the high-quality education without worrying about the high tuition fees of private schools.

Byju’s Objective:

Byju’s objective to make learning easy for the student and every student should love learning and get addicted to learning.

Byju app trying to make it possible by use of a mix of video lessons and interactive tools to personalize learning for every student.

Founder of Byju:

Byju Raveendran is himself a son of a teacher.

Byju has worked as a globe-trotting service engineer for a shipping firm for a couple of years.

He used to help some friends pass the Common Aptitude Test entrance examination on weekends and holidays.

Journey of Byju

Founded in 2011 Byju’s started with a special focus on K-12 segment and to build a strong team of experts to create world class learning content.

In 2014 Byju launched its first tablet learning program for competitive exams and for grade 8 to grade 12 to make quality teacher and content accessible 24 hrs for students.

In 2015 Byju launched its learning mobile application and more than 2 million students downloaded the app within 3 months of the launch.

byju app case study

Byju app got lots of positive feedback from parents and students.

Where parents said that Byju’s app helped in improving overall grades of their children.

As per analytics student spend an average of 40 mins every day on Byju app.

In 2017 after two years of its App launch, Byju app added curriculum for 4th and 5th grades also and has more than 8 million students on the platform have more than 4 lakh, yearly subscribers.

INVESTORS:

BYJU’S received seed funding from Aarin Capital in 2013.

As of 2019, BYJU’S has secured nearly $785 million in funding from investors, including Sequoia Capital India, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Tencent, Sofina, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Brussels-based family office Verlinvest, development finance institution IFC, Naspers Ventures, CPPIB and General Atlantic.

BYJU’S was the first company in Asia to receive an investment from Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (co-funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan)

As per the company filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, BYJU’S became a unicorn and is valued at US$1 billion (INR 6,505 Crore) as of March 2018.

BYJU'S operates roughly on a premium business model where a paid subscription is required for most of the content.[12] In 2017, BYJU’s generated revenues of about 260 crore (US $40 million or €33 million) and doubled it 2018 financial year, earning 520 crore.[2][5] BYJU’S has targeted a revenue of 1400 crores for 2019 financial year.

The Idea of Byju appealed to many big investors in the market.

In 2016 venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and Belgian investment firm Sofina invested 75 million dollars in Byju.

In 2016 Byju received his biggest investment of 50 million dollars from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic organization created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan in 2015.

The learning app is now being used by 1.6 lakh paid subscribers. Within no time Byju’s increased its revenue by 400%. The startup, whose average annual subscription ticket size is Rs 10,000, generated a revenue of Rs 4 crore in its first year

Impressed by Byju’s new technology innovation, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative by Mark Zuckerbergextended its helps in form of capital fund to help them further expand its operation in the international market.

 The fresh round of funding for Byju’s comes as education technology startup see a rise in their popularity, both among consumers and investors.

the global education technology, or edtech, industry will grow 61% from $349 billion in 2018 to $562 billion by 2022, according to U.K.-based market-research firm Technavio.

The latest $150 million infusion led by Qatar Investment Authority brings the total funding received by Byju’s to more than $1 billion, following a $31 million investment in March led by U.S. private equity firm General Atlantic and China’s Tencent, and $540 million last December from South Africa’s Naspers and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

BIG BASKET FUNDING

“The first thing that struck me about Byju was that he was passionate about teaching,” says Ranjan Pai, the billionaire doctor who controls the education and healthcare focused Manipal Group. “But when he asked me for $8 million, I nearly fell off my chair.” Impressed by Raveendran’s confidence, Pai obliged him and in 2012 became one of Byju’s first two investors, buying a 26% stake alongside a former software executive. He still retains 1% of Byju’s.

In 2017 BYJU’s decides to enter the United States and other English speaking international markets. It believes that the United States has a large demand for “better learning,” a strong digital payment infrastructure, and a willingness to pay subscription fees.

In March 2017 BYJU’s case study featured in Harvard Business School.

The study titled ‘Byju’s The Learning App,” will be available for teaching purposes within and outside Harvard.

The case study was authored by a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School named John Jong-Hyun Kim and Rachna Tahilyani, Associate Director the case study talks about the growth of the app, its impact on students and how this K-12 app can be used by students globally.

Currently, Byju’s The learning app has 8 million downloads and 4,00,000 annual paid subscribers.

 The app caters to classes four-12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE, and GMAT.

Vodafone’s solutions helped BYJU’s, India’s largest Ed-tech company, provide engaging learning programs to students.

Their K-12 learning app featured animations, simulations and video content.

With Vodafone’s technology and connectivity, BYJU’s could optimise their operations and are now a Ready Business

Funding and financials

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

BYJU’s needed a stabilised network for content delivery from the studio to the portal and on to end users across the county

Post-demonetisation, there were a few challenges since Cash on Delivery (CoD) was the preferred mode of payment for a lot of customers

With a large set of employees working from remote locations across multiple shifts, effective collaboration was an issue

BYJU’s existing PRI telephony setup was not able to support their large call volumes

Vodafone Solution

Vodafone deployed seven dedicated and secure Leased Line links to help deliver content from the studio through to the end customer

M-Pesa provided a safe and reliable digital payment option to customers for purchasing educational content online

G Suite, from the Vodafone CloudStore, helped boost employee collaboration across locations

SIP trunks comprising 500 trunk sessions with 2000 DIDs strongly supported their high volume of calls

Vodafone’s Toll-Free Service was also provided for a pan-India helpline

Business Benefit

BYJU'S now have improved uptime with content being delivered securely and seamlessly from studio to the portal and then to the end customer’s mobile learning app

M-Pesa has significantly improved customer payments leading to improved operational stability, especially in Tier C and Tier D towns

G Suite helped employees collaborate leading to increased efficiency

As a CloudStore customer, BYJU'S now have a single point of contact for all cloud solutions and services

Large call volumes were comfortably supported and the Toll-Free Service, improved customer reach and satisfaction

Awards

Think and Learn entered both Deloitte Technology Fast50 India and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific ratings and has been present there ever

TECHNOLOGY IN BYJU

Automation allowed their business to scale and grow.

Integration with third-party applications allows them to communicate orders easily with their 3PL system.

Integration with marketing platforms centralized their lead management system.

what made Byju’s look for a custom based back-end solution?

“We were aware that in order to smoothly run our daily business operations, timely communication among various departments & exchange of organized information was the key.”

As they were growing, Byju’s were not keen to invest in a Traditional ERP solution which is often difficult to customize and does not scale with growing volume. While they were searching for a back-end solution, they came across Orderhive.

Considering Orderhive offers customized solution under “Orderhive Enterprise”, taking up the challenge of helping Byju’s streamline their operations didn’t seem like a far-fetched reality.

Through detailed analysis, Orderhive experts were able to understand the outcomes the company was trying to achieve by using a customized solution.

Byju’s needed features to be developed as per their order management workflow.

Sponsorship

Members Of Indian Cricket Team In Jersey

In July 2019 BYJU'S acquired Indian cricket team Jersey rights from Oppo.

Acquisitions

In July 2017, Think and Learn acquired TutorVista (including Edurite) from Pearson

In January 2019, BYJU’S acquired a US-based Osmo, a maker of educational games for children aged 3-8 years for $120 million.

Competitors

BYJU's has emerged as the leader in EdTech space in India. However, there are many other private organisations in India who are using Activity-Based Learning and Blended Learning to evoke curiosity in students. They either have similar products in the market or they are working actively on research and development. Some of the well-known ones are Embibe, Toppr [36], Vedantu, and NumberNagar [37]. All of these organisations have a presence in multiple states in India.