BYJU'S-THE LEARNING APP, GIVING VALUE AND CAPTURING VALUE

Byju's-The Learning App' meant for schoolchildren is becoming an event in the school education
scene of our country. Launched in 2015, the K-12 self-learning mobile application (app) focused
largely on maths, science and English is being cited as a disruptor in the tech based education field in
India. It has already been used by millions of schoolchildren across the country. To quote the
managing director of Sequoia Capital India, a major investor in Byju's, 'Byju's will be one of India's
Biggest Education Stories; this company will soon change the way the world will learn.

Byju's is an ambitious business start-up. In two years, the start-up is valued at 245 billion.

Some of the world's biggest investors, such as Zuckerberg and Tencent, have put their money into it.

Education Is Big Business in India

In India, education is big business. School education, in particular, is a fast-growing and highly
thriving business, owing to India's big population of school-going children. India, today, has the
largest K-12 education system in the world, with over 260 million enrolments. The new technologies
in learning have opened up the online education field in a big way.

Byju Raveendran, the founder, puts it in a very interesting way: "We want to Disney-fy

education; make learning a Disneyland of entertainment for children by taking out the

drudgery and fatigue associated with learning. The unique combination of media, technology

and content is helping us move towards this promise we made to children'.

The business idea: With the use of technology, try out an alternative to the age-old school

education/teaching system of the country. Any change in education patterns should start early in the
child's life, so concentrate on school-going students in classes 4-12.

Locating the Value Gaps/Drawbacks of the Ongoing System

The first question he raised was: What should the new offer do? And how would it do it? He did not
have to stretch too much for an answer. The lapses/problems with our education system were too
obvious and debated at various levels. The new offer had to address those drawbacks and rectify
them.

There is a huge mismatch in the way students learn concepts and how they should ideally be doing
it.

Learning happens because of the fear of exams; it never evokes a love for the subject. In a
conventional crowded classroom, access to personalised teaching is very meagre. High-quality
teachers are costly and scarce. The very profession of teaching has become somewhat unattractive
to ambitious youngsters; it is all the truer of teaching in schools.

Byju's task was cut out for him: his new package had to fill up these gaps.

Creating the Product Offer; Building New Benefits/Value into It Aim: Give a teacher to every student;
let him learn when he feels like doing it.

It is done: With the new app, the teacher is there on their mobile phones, tabs or computers at just a
click of a button. He explains anything and everything that is given in their school books in the most
innovative way and that too in real time, by creating effective tech-enabled learning programmes.
Aim: Children are learning only by 'rote' and our of compulsion; bring the child's natural curiosity
back, get him involved and make him ask questions. It is done: By creating products in a format that
they like: laced with videos, stories, animation, colour, quizzes and even music, Tutors bring the real
world into the act-using pizza to explain fractions, a birthday cake to teach circles and segments, and
a basketball game to demonstrate projectile motion. Science experiments are overlaid with
animation. High-quality learning modules with interactives are the strong points.

Aim: A teacher to every student is not enough. A good professional teacher who is an expert on the
subject must teach, so that the child is not the victim of inept teaching. It is done: Real-life expert
teachers are used to deliver the lessons. This coupled with technology as an enabler makes the
delivery of concepts easy, effective and engaging. Overall, the programme is a complete integrated
learning experience, where the teacher's knowledge and skills are several times amplified through
the scope of technology. The teachers are given access to varied tools and technology to make
teaching more interesting and impactful.

Aim: A good professional teacher is not enough; even the provision of one-to-one interaction is not
enough. As a teacher and trainer himself, Byju was very well aware that a lesson deliv ered to a
student will become purposeful only if the student has the opportunity to get feed back about his
grasp of the lesson/performance. This is easier in the normal classroom but difficult on an online
platform. It has to be done; this unique benefit has to be given.

It is done: Every student is offered customised feedback and recommendation based on their
performance. It is here that the maximum use of technology comes in. Whenever they make a
mistake, the right remedial method gets into action. What a personal tutor would do, Byju's app is
doing. This serves as the best differentiator and, therefore, the best "value add' to Byju's offer.

Why do children find value in this offer?

Personalised coaching and feedback for each student is the trump card of Byju's..

How does byju's manage it?

The backbone of Byju's personalisation rests on the rich learning profile that is built for every
student. It is done by leveraging big-data analytics to trace the learning fingerprint of every student.
This is supported by deep Knowledge Graphs of over 50,000 concepts that have been created to
design personal learning journeys-videos, questions, adaptive flows, quizzes, flashcards and so on.
Additionally, the learning content is also tagged to multiple other prop erties and parameters.

Aim: Online learning provided by most service providers is limited to simply digitising con tent and
taking it online. It almost amounts to the traditional classroom minus a teacher! Remove this big
defect.

It is done: The measures listed above are making Byju's the most entertaining and yet the most
purposeful classroom for the child-a classroom at the child's convenience, at his level of comfort.

Aim: Parents, as a class, are big stakeholders; target them and satisfy them. It is done: The motives
and compulsions of the parents are separately addressed. The firm introduced Byju's Mentor App
that helps the parents understand the child's progress, that too in real time.

Communicating the Value of the Offer

Byju's used the digital media and the outdoors to propagate the uniqueness of the app.
Schoolchildren being the target, sports events were used in a big way for promotion. As more
investments came in, more budget was allotted for communication. The most rewarding experience
for the firm was the fact that the actual users of the product-children themselves-became the best
ambassadors of the product. They carried their newly found enthusiasm for the subjects to their
classroom. In quick time, Byju's became an easily recognised and well talked-about brand.

Delivering the Offer

The smartphone as a learning device, the app as a medium and the Internet as the pathway together
gave the firm almost infinite reach in delivering the offer. The product would run on smartphones
with Android and iOS platforms, tabs and computers. The rapid expansion of smartphones in the
country has deepened the company's reach. The product now has a reach of over 1,700 towns and
cities.

Pricing the App: Offering Value to Customer and Capturing Value Back to the Firm

This was quite naturally a critical decision for the new product. The user is the school kid; the payer
is the parent. The child must be happy with the product; the parent must be happy with price. The
payment is not part of the child's school expenditure; it is an additional cost. Although the app was
mostly targeted at urban parents and children, the affordability factor had to be kept in view. These
were the arguments in favour of pegging the price low.

For the firm, the development cost of the was high; it was employing high-quality content
developers, teachers, tech people and studios. Even psychologists were on the rolls to get the right
clue to the children's psyche. The cost of upgrading the app, development of new app offers,
administration of the online platform, all put together pointed towards a premium price. Through
trials, the firm found out that its app with so much of benefits and value packed into it can fetch its
rightful returns back. For example, the app is priced at an annual fee of 23,000-230,000 for classes 4-
10 for maths and science. Classes 4-10 are the main target group, and maths and science the main
subjects handled. Two years of performance proves that Byju's app is offering the due value to the
customers and collecting due value back to the firm's kitty. It already has 300,000 paid subscribers,
and 1,000 new subscribers are being added every day.

Value Does Not Imply Cheapness

The moment one mentions the term 'value', people are tempted to feel that the whole thing is
about something cheap, something with a low price. It is not so. Look at Byju's. A class 4 child is
paying 23,000 to buy this app. It happens solely because the parent who pays is convinced that for
his child, this product is worth that price. He is getting his money's worth! And for the firm, at this
price, the product returns value to the firm's kitty. The firm is now confident that at this price their
investment is worth it! That was the sweet spot in pricing.

Competition with Wide-ranging Price Offers

It is not as if the absence of competing offers facilitated such a pricing from Byju's. The oppo site was
the case.

In fact, the non-profit Khan Academy is a mighty competitor; funded by Bill Gates Foundation, Khan
is offering absolutely free services with free YouTube videos. Khan is already a global operator. So,
Byju's stood at the other extreme, with a high price tag. Still the product was welcome to the
market. To quote the firm, 'We are our biggest competition and the focus is to outplay ourselves
every time with new innovations which make learning more fun'.

Augmenting Value
To strengthen the tech capabilities, Byju's recently acquired Vidyartha, a career guidance and
academic profile builder, and Tutor Vista and Edurite from Pearson. To supplement the online
system, the firm started traditional classrooms also. The direct personal contacts with the teachers
gave a fillip to the whole programme. They commenced it in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Chennai.