It was 2003 when Byju
Raveendran came to Bangalore for his holiday, and he visited his friends
who were preparing for the CAT exam. He taught them some different and distinct
ways in which they can approach questions and can use time more efficiently.
For fun, Byju himself gave the exam and unexpectedly
scored 100 percentile. His friends were impressed and happy for him, but he
took it as a lucky break. To retest his skills and check whether he truly did
well in the last one, he decided to appear in the exam again. Surprisingly, he
scored 100 percentile, once more.
After the CAT incident, his friends kept on insisting him
to coach students preparing for competitive exams as his methods and
applications were unconventional from what was already present. Byju thought about it, and after some
thoughts, he decided to play his role as a teacher. He took a break from his
job and began teaching some students in his first classroom that was originally
a terrace of his friend's house.
He was never behind the money and decided to allow free
trial classes of seven days to students and charged them only if they were
satisfied with the quality of teaching. In no time, students began to increase
in number, which led him to rent a classroom space where he can accommodate
everyone. Very quickly, the number of students under him increased to 20000
across the country, and Byju had to travel to more than seven cities in a week
to teach them all.
Gradually, it was getting challenging for him to maintain
the hectic schedule so he decided to record his lectures and share it to the
places where he could not manage to reach and shortly more than 25 cities had
access to his classes.
In 2010, Byju was proposed with the idea to provide his
classes online so that millions of students could also avail and join his
quality teaching. At that time internet was not a ready to available commodity
in India but Byju still went ahead with it and formed ‘Think and Learn Pvt.
Ltd.’.
Then in 2015, a startup company created and launched the
app called, ‘BYJU’s- The Learning App’.
Within three months of its launch, the app had more than 55 lacs downloads, and
over 2.5 lacs paid subscribers.
Also, Byju's
startup became the first in Asia to pull investments from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s
organisation- The Chan-Zukerberg initiative, and this happened in 2016. He
become a successful Entrepreneur in India.
An international achievement for the company also came in
2017 when it was included as a case study at Harvard University. Along with
that, his company gets in Shahrukh Khan as its brand ambassador, and in 2019 it
was announced as the official sponsor of the Indian Cricket Team’s jersey as
well.
Byju Raveendran has very inspiring story. He brought up an educational betterment of a
country and pushing India towards its Digital Path!
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