CHENNAI : Byju’s has been a household name in India for a while now. With a focus on easy learning with its Learning App and memory cards loaded with video classes, Byju’s managed to pull the attention of both parents and children, from across social strata. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a miserable time for most, it witnessed exponential growth. After that peak, began the downward spiral. Allegations of defaulting on huge loans and salaries, accounting malpractices, mis-selling, and a toxic work culture came up, the valuations plummeted, children went back to their brick-and-mortar schools, and the company is struggling to stay afloat.
The story of Byju’s, which is an ongoing one, is the story of the rise and fall of an edtech empire. Pradip K Saha, a journalist, chronicles this saga with a keen and investigative eye in his book, The Learning Trap – How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride (Juggernaut; Rs 399). Rigorously researched, the book details how a startup, which, in 2018, became the first edtech unicorn in India, dug a deep hole for itself and dragged others in as well. Saha started following developments in the industry in early 2020, during the ‘edtech boom’. The field was thriving and there were several players, including Unacademy, Vedantu and Toppr to name a few, but Byju’s was the biggest. “People were going gaga over Byju’s,” he says.
Founded by Byju Raveendran, a former engineer and math teacher from Kerala, the company had come a long way from him taking tuition for a few students to becoming the biggest edtech enterprise in the country with a net worth of over $22 billion. For the longest time, it was only growing, even as many who had subscribed to its services were expressing dissatisfaction. “Why do so many people buy Byju’s courses?” Saha knew there was something beyond the obvious.
Saha describes in the book how the company resorted to relentless ‘push marketing’, manipulating a potential ‘lead’ into making a purchase, and also the system of loans that it offered them, which would land them in an ‘edtech chakravyuha’. “For Byju’s, especially when dealing with the press, the first step is always denial,” says Saha, about how even conversations with Raveendran himself would always only ‘go around in circles’. The book details how Byju’s did wrong by many, how it crossed certain financial and ethical boundaries, but Saha pins down the company’s downfall to a reckless desire for growth. Its acquisition sprees are infamous andthe industry joke was that Byju’s could well be ‘buying’ the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
Byju’s is, for Saha, also a cautionary tale, and though the sun seems to be setting on the company, one cannot write it off as yet. He says: “A rule of thumb is to never ever underestimate an entrepreneur’s capacity for perseverance or his ability to bounce back.”