In the days before mobile internet spread across India, Byju Raveendran, an engineer and test preparation tutor from a coastal village in Kerala, could hold the attention of a stadium full of thousands of teenagers with the power of numbers. Or, at least, the magic numbers they would need to pass India’s competitive standardised engineering exams.
But despite running teaching events on a scale he would later describe as “almost like a maths concert”, Raveendran wanted a bigger audience. By 2015, he launched his own teaching app: Byju’s.
Today, the Bangalore-headquartered group offers smartphone, or tablet-based, learning to students from primary school age upwards, using graphics and cartoons to liven up video lessons. The company says it has 150mn-plus users, although less than 10 per cent are subscribers, who pay an average of Rs15,000 ($180) for an annual membership to the app. Parents can pay more for live lessons and personal attention from teachers.