By India Today Business DeskByju’s co-founder Divya Gokulnath said India is bound to become the edtech capital of the world, highlighting that the market has been registering 40 per cent growth compared to the global average of just over 16 per cent.
Her comment came during a session at the India Today Conclave 2023, where she was joined by Byju’s CEO and her husband, Byju Raveendran.
Gokulnath said, “The potential of the edtech sector is so huge that we can literally create a global champion coming out of India for the world.”
On Byju’s growth, she said the brand now caters to 150 million students across the world, with products in 120 countries and offices in 20 plus countries.
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“The edtech market in India is growing at 40 per cent, while the global edtech market is growing at 16.4 per cent, which itself is very good,” she said, adding that, “India is bound to become the edtech capital of the world.”
Gukulnath sounded optimistic about the future of Byju’s, given its immense contribution towards realising the dream of “education for all”.
“When you are creating for 1.4 billion people, you are creating for one-sixth of humanity. This is something which has helped us create a global product, personalised for every country and every learner,” she said.
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Gokulnath also said there have been many learnings along the journey to build Byju’s. “We are pioneers in edtech but we are not pioneers in perfection. What we were building was something that was built in India for the first time,” she said.
“In education, we were painting an empty campus. Sure, we went over the lines sometimes, but then it is important that we corrected ourselves and we learnt along the way and we grew,” Gokulnath added.
“In fact, I say we started as teachers, but more importantly, we are learners. We are learning every single day, improving every single day. And there is scope to do that. We have 300 million school-going children, we have a million teachers, 15 lakh schools in India. The potential is so huge, we can literally create a global champion coming out of India for the world,” she said.
Byju’s journey before fame
Byju Raveendran also echoed his wife’s view and said there is a long way to go in what they are trying to achieve with Byju’s. He also shared anecdotes from his early days before Byju’s gained recognition.
He said the media only started reporting about the fundraising part of Byju’s journey, which started only in 2015. “Not many people know that I started teaching formally in 2003-2004,” he said, adding that he used to teach for 11 years before Byju’s gained any sort of recognition.
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“I used to go to 9 cities, 5 cities from Monday to Friday and on Saturday morning, I used to go to Bengaluru and in the evening I used to be in Chennai. On Sunday mornings, I used to go to Mumbai and in the evening I used to be in Pune. There was a time when I did this non-stop for four years without a break,” Raveendran said.
“What I am trying to say here is there is no overnight success. There is no substitute for hardwork,” he added.
On Messi deal and layoffs
The couple also spoke about the deal with Argentinian football star Lionel Messi, which was announced at a time when thousands of people were let go from the company.
While the timing of the Messi deal and layoffs at Byju’s clashed, Divya Gokulnath said, “These deals do not get signed overnight, it was something that we did because we wanted to create a global champion from India and create awareness across the world.”
“When we did it at the point that we signed the deal, we had about 25 per cent of our students coming outside India. So it was to create global awareness about the brand,” she added.
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Byju Raveendran said the deal was signed many months back. “You can’t sign Lionel Messi for a partnership in just a week. It’s a very different kind of partnership that mainly promotes education for all,” he said.
“And after signing him up, we have actually doubled the number of NGOs and the inbound interest that we got from NGOs. Unfortunately, it clashed with the layoffs,” Raveendran added.
“Everyone talks about the 2,500 people we had to let go during those three months, but no one talks about the 25,000 that we hired in the past 12 months. In Feb of this month, we hired 2,000 new people.”
Byju Raveendran also said that Byju’s is the largest startup employer in India by a margin.
“Across all our companies, we have 55,000 people working for us. I am not justifying the layoffs, but when we acquired six companies we had to optimise because there was a lot of duplicity and redundancy,” he added.
Irwin Lind
Cakra News