- The Chief Executive Officer of BYJU’s joined the elite club after his venture Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd. secured a funding of $150 million earlier this month.
- The latest backing the company got from is by Qatar Investment Authority.
India has a new billionaire who is an ex-classroom teacher. Yes, we are talking about the man who developed an education app that has grown to a valuation of almost $6 billion in about seven years.
The above-mentioned man is none other than, Byju Raveendran. The Chief Executive Officer of BYJU’s joined the elite club after his venture Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd. secured a funding of $150 million earlier this month.
The journey of Byju Raveendran
Born in the family of school teachers across the southern coast of India, Raveendran went on to become an engineer and then helped his friends crack engineering and management exams.
The classes started getting huge and he started teaching in sports stadiums becoming a celebrity tutor in the process.
He set up Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd. in 2011, offering online lessons. He launched the main app in 2015. The business saw more than 35 million people signing up among which about 2.4 million pay the amount of Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 12,000 as an annual fee. This helped BYJU become profitable in the year ending March 2019. That was when Raveendran decided to look for long term investors. The latest backing the company got from is by Qatar Investment Authority.
In the latest round, Raveendran bought shares in the company to maintain the equity shares.
The company has kept the approach simple- provide content to kids which is short and caters to their fewer attention spans. The company is planning to expand to English speaking countries now.
Teaming Up with Disney
This news comes up with another news of that Byju’s app will team up with Walt Disney Co. and introduce this product to the American market by early 2020.
This will be the biggest leap for the 37-year billionaire. They are introducing a new concept with the Disney, where the cult characters of Disney cartoon world will teach math and English to students of grade one to three. This means from the Lion King’s Simba to Frozen’s Anna will be making learning fun for kids.
“Kids everywhere relate to Disneys’ Simba or Moana, who grip kids attention before we take them through the loop of learning,” said Raveendran.
It’s a readymade audience for the app, as the lessons will be set in the premise of entertainment classic.
For example:- To learn shapes, the kids will have to jump in the story of cars where they have to identify car parts such as tires, seats, etc.
With booming Indian online learning market, it is expected to more than double $5.7 billion in 2020. Byju’s own fortunes have climbed alongside the market. Its revenues are expected to more than double to Rs 3000 crore ($435 million) in the year ending March 2020.
