A 33 year old Byju Raveendran decided to focus on the not sought after competitive examination market to help students prepare and crack the entrance exams from engineering to medicine to the IAS and even the SAT and GMAT. He gave up his American dream for a chance to change the way students think and learn.
Founded in 2008 Think & Learn is grown from addressing the needs of 250 students to over 20,000 students today. With the launch of the K12 tablet Byju hopes to capture even bigger market through distance learning.
Every weekend in Bangalore over 2000 students assemble in a classroom to get ready to bell the cat. The man cracking the whip is Byju Raveendran. A CAT topper and National Mathematics Olympiad winner, Byju decided to ditch the IIMs to start Think & Learn, the parent company of Byju's classes.
For Byju having grown up in a family of teacher's education seemed to be a natural fit. What started as a CAT training institute with just 250 students in 2008 today prepares students for UPSC, engineering entrances, GMAT and the GRE.
Realising that there is an upper limit to the number of students he can reach out to if he continues with a brick and mortar model, Byju started identifying best teachers across India. Today it reaches out to students in different parts of the country through VSAT centers. However, what is different about Byju's class?
Raveendran differentiates his classes with others. He believes that all the other coaching institutes basically identify the patterns and make them practice 100s of question so that they get familiar with all the previous questions. However, he does not concentrate on that. He basically teaches students the principles so that they can solve any question. He teaches them how to expect questions, how to predict questions rather than solve questions made by someone else. "We mainly train them is that they will be in a position to expect questions and more than questions its not just about doing well in the exam they will clearly understand the concepts so that they will be able to frame those questions," he said.
With 60 centers pan India Byju's class isn't cheap with students shelling out anywhere between Rs 6000-50,000 a year. Having already grossed revenues of Rs 14 crore Think & Learn received its first round of funding, a whooping USD 10 million in December 2012 from the Manipal Group.
What made the Chairman of Manipal Global Education Services and the Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai bet on Byju was that he had a great business for India and his idea was truly transformational.
Pai heard of him first, when in Manipal we found a rush of young people going to a class. When he enquired as to why they are doing that he found that there was a person by the name of Byju Raveendran who is taking classes for them to enable them to pass their classes in IAM. Students were very happy with him and the success rate was extraordinarily high. "Then we contacted him and requested for a meeting, he came and he spoke to us and he explained. We found that he was a wonderful entrepreneur who has hit upon a successful idea and who has made sure that the idea actually worked. He has tested it out, he has led from the front, done many things himself, he has opened to change, he has changed the way of doing things based upon responses" said Pai.
With financial backing, Byju is all set for the next growth phase and is betting on the power of tablets to take his classes to students anytime, anywhere. These K12 tablets launched in February this year are preloaded with adaptive text, animation videos and practice tests. Currently the content is only available for engineering and medical entrance exams in Bangalore. The team of Think & Learn is now working on adding courses and taking the tablet pan India by next year.
Raveendran informed that for the next three years he will be getting into the school education segment. There he will be coming out with products in maths and science through tablet, which will be in a completely adaptive platform. Revenue numbers which we are expecting over the next three years is close to Rs 100 crore. In the last three years we have been doubling our revenue without any investment. With investment as well as with lot more brilliant minds coming together, joining he hopes to come out with products across test preparation segments as well as into school segments in maths and science through tablets.
With an eye on scoring revenues of a Rs 100 crore over the next three years Byju is all set to kick-start Think & Learn foraying to the school segment to prepare students from class eight onwards by supplementing their school studies. The bigger goal however for this state level player is to teach students how to learn.
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