Byju Raveendran – Founder and CEO of BYJU’s learning app, is the newest addition to the billionaire’s club. The parent firm of Bengaluru based learning app, Think & Learn Private Ltd recently raised $150 million by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund – Qatar Investment Authority. Raising the net worth of the company to nearly $6 billion, the funding made Raveendran enter the billionaire club.
BYJU’s revenue is increased threefold to Rs 1,430 crore in the fiscal year 2018-19 and turned profitable on a full year basis. The company reportedly crossed over Rs 200 crore in April 2019 and is expecting to cross over Rs. 3,000 crore revenue this year. CEO Raveendran owns over 21 percent of the total shares in the company.
BYJU’s was founded in 2008 by Byju Raveendran, and his wife and former student, Divya Gokulnath. The learning app was founded in 2015 and it offers learning programmes for classes 6-12 and competitive exams AIPMT, JEE, IAS, GRE, CAT and GMAT. The app claims of having over 2.4 million of paid subscribers.
BYJU’s was able to raise funding over $240 million from the ‘big’ names around the world including Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, Lightspeed Venture Partners, etc. In June, BYJU’s collaborated with The Walt Disney Company aiming to teach 6-8-year-old students, maths and science with cartoon character such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.
An excellent entrepreneur, Byju Raveendran is known for his extraordinary teaching skills as well. His success story of starting from the scratch and making it to the top is really inspiring. It will be interesting to see where he will take his learning app after the latest round of funding and app’s collaboration with The Walt Disney Company.
