Byju Raveendran started Byju on the terrace of a house. Here’s the inspiring story of the company, which is now India’s top ed-tech brand.
Byju Raveendran is the Bengaluru-based educational technology company’s owner, CEO, and founder. He is both an educator and a billionaire from India, who used to be a service engineer for a global shipping firm. However, the notion of teaching hundreds of kids for competitive exams altered his life, and he now owns India’s largest ed-tech company.
Byju’s has become the most popular education software for kids of all ages. Byju makes use of original information, beautiful animations, and lectures by India’s top academics.
Byju Raveendran was born in 1981 in the Kerala coastal hamlet of Azhikode. His father was a physics teacher, while his mother was a math teacher.
Byju attended a Malayalam medium school and earned a B.Tech from the Government College of Engineering in Kannur.
During a holiday while working as a service engineer, he helped some of his friends who were preparing for the CAT exam, then took the exam twice and scored 100 percentile both times. After two years, he decided to leave his job and begin assisting pupils with exam preparation.
Raveendran began instructing aspirants on the patio of one of his close friends’ homes, and thus Byjus’ adventure began.
Initially, he just taught for MBA examinations, but he soon began teaching full-time.
As the number of students grew, he founded his ed-tech company Byju’s with the tagline “fall in love with learning.” Byju Raveendran’s teaching methods were so well-known that he once had about 20,000 students from various states.
He started his own coaching lessons with barely two lacs and progressed from terrace to classroom. For the first time, Byju’s introduced an online video learning program in 2009.
After 4 years of hard effort, Byju’s was introduced in 2015 as Byju’s – The Learning App, assisting students in learning through material on the CAT, the NEET (National Eligibility and Entrance Test), the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination), the civil services test, and much more.
When the number of students increased, Byju’s became so popular that it had over 3.5 lacs annual subscriptions with an average usage of 40 minutes per day and over 6 million downloads.
Byju’s provides extremely entertaining and effective programs for students in grades 4 through 12, including competitive exams such as CAT, JEE, NEET IAS, GMAT, and GRE. One of the most significant benefits of Byju’s is that its classes are less expensive than regular classrooms. According to students, learning through the application is considerably easier.
Byju’s just purchased Tutor Vista and EduRite. In 2019, Raveendran became the official sponsor of the Indian Cricket Team’s uniform.
Raveendran has received numerous honors, including the Big Research NDTV Profit Business & Service Excellence Award, the CNBC-TV 18 Crisil Emerging India Award, the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India, and the Fast 500.
Harvard University added Byju’s app as a case study in 2017. Byju’s net worth hit $6.5 billion in 2019.
The app has over 40 million subscribers and over 12 million downloads on the Google Play Store. In 2018, the app was launched in the United States, the United Kingdom, and a number of other English-speaking countries.
Raveendran, along with his brother and wife, had a net worth of $3.05 billion in 2020. Byju’s paid $1 billion for Aakash Educational Services Ltd. in 2021.
Mohandas Pai and Ranjan Pai made the first Rs. 50 crore investment in Byju’s. In Asia, it is the sole startup financed by Mark Zuckerberg.
Byju won $50 million from Mark Zuckerberg’s organization in 2016.
Byju’s income in 2011-12 was Rs. 4 crores, which climbed to Rs. 12 crores in 2013, Rs 20 crores in 2014, and Rs 260 crores in 2017.
Byju’s has assisted countless pupils in achieving their academic objectives. Byju Raveendran and his company’s tale is undeniably inspiring; from being a basic engineer to being one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, it inspires all of us to do more in our lives.
