According to IBEF, the education market in India is estimated at $91.7 billion and is expected to cross $100 billion by 2019. India has more than 1.5 million schools with over 260 million enrolled students. It also has a vibrant tutoring industry. The e-learning sector is expected to reach US$ 1.96 billion by 2021 with around 9.5 million users. Indian Byju’s learning app from Think and Learn Pvt Ltd has recently entered the Billion Dollar Unicorn Club.

Byju’s’ Journey

Think and Learn Pvt Ltd or better known as Byju’s was founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran in Bangalore. Around 2007, Byju helped some of his friends prepare for the Common Admission Test (CAT), which is the entrance test for India’s best management institutes. He then started conducting CAT preparation workshops on weekends. From a classroom of 40 students, he was soon booking auditoriums for 1,200 students. Soon, Byju replicated this successful model to eight other cities including Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune.

By 2009, some of his best students joined him to scale up the content and the business. In 2011, Byju’s was founded and it started offering the sessions through the video format. In 2014, it launched a tablet learning program for competitive exams and grades 8-12.

In 2015, it launched the Byju’s learning app and within three months, over 2 million children were using it. Byju’s creates personalized learning programs for students based on their proficiency levels and capabilities. It generates slick, high quality videos for the K 12 segment that are developed by over 500 people in the Research and Development team.

Today, Byju’s offers learning programs for class 4-12 and test preparation for competitive exams like JEE, AIPMT, CAT, IAS, GRE, and GMAT. It has over 15 million users, 900,000 annual paying subscribers, and a 90% renewal rate.

Byju’s’ Financials

Byju’s follows a freemium model. The price for the program for each class starts from Rs 23,000 ($360). The price for competitive exams can vary from Rs 15,000 ($235) to Rs 70,000 ($1,000). The K 12 vertical accounts for about 90% of the total revenue.