Unicorns #3: Byju's
Guess which is India’s most valuable unicorn today? It’s the educational app, Byju’s. As Ashish B writes in his biography of the company, COVID-19 helped the company’s growth as online education became common. The company’s founder, the eponymous Malayalee named Byju Raveendran did his schooling at a government school in Kerala – both his parents were teachers (in Maths and Physics). Rote learning did not appeal to him at all; he preferred to visualize concepts, a technique that would become part of Byju’s teaching system. He did engineering, not medicine, because only engineering would give the “time to play sports”. Having completed his Mechanical engineering, he started working as a service engineer for a shipping company and got to see the world. His friends, who were preparing for the IIM (CAT) exams, sought his help with the Maths side of things - He had an aptitude for teaching. In Bangalore, he was soon taking classes for around 40 students. It ...