Byju’s overpowering drive of profit-making over good education

About Byju’s

Byju’s is specifically designed for school learning. School education and its significance in the entire system of education as a pillar is kept in mind by the people who launched this school learning e-application. It was launched in the year 2015. Two key terms are highlighted by the advertisers of Byjus. One is personalized learning and the second is effective learning.

The company offers classes from class 1 to class 12 pupils. It also has started to provide guidance and methodological support to the aspirants of different entrance examinees like JEE, IAS etc. Byjus declares that right now it has over 50 million registered students and 3.5 million paid subscriptions.

Byjus, the e-learning platform, thus comes under the umbrella of edtech India. It means Indian Educational Technology launched under the Digital India project. The firm, before launching the app, was founded in the year 2011 by Byju Raveendran after whom the company name clearly comes before us. The launchpad city of Byjus was Bangalore, the tech hub of India.

show more

This year, in September, Byjus has been declared as the world’s most valuable edtech platform with a total valuation of 11.1 Billion dollars. The company also claimed that it has made a profit of 2800 crore in Indian currency by the Financial year 2020. It was declared officially on May 27, 2020.

Byju Raveendran, at the Global Trends Festival 2020, further announces that the Byjus startup has an 86% regeneration rate. With 70 million users and 4.7 million subscribers, Byju’s app downloads have jumped to 600% from 2017 to 2020. In July 2019, BYJU’s won the sponsorship rights for the Indian cricket team jersey, replacing its former sponsor Oppo. Shah Rukh Khan is the brand ambassador for BYJU’S right now.

show less

byju's and its courses are they access friendly

Byjus: The Founder and His Dreams

BYJU’S app was designed by the company named Think and Learn Pvt Ltd, which was founded by Byju Raveendran in 2011. Raveendran, who was qualified as an engineer, started coaching students to pass mathematics exams in 2006. So, he started his career as a private tutor

In 2011 he founded an educational company with the assistance of his students. It offered online video-based learning programs for the K-12 section as well as competitive preparation based exams. In 2012, Think and Learn as a company entered both Deloitte Technology Fast50 India and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific ratings and has been present there ever since. Thus, it acquired a marvelous leap from here.

In August 2015, after 4 years of consistent developments and a constant upward graph of improved services, the firm launched BYJU’S The Learning App, the final clout. In 2017 i.e. by two years, Think and Learn launched BYJU’S Math App for kids and BYJU’S Parent Connect app to help parents track their child’s learning course. Such concepts and striking upon the common weak point of Indian learning system soon proved to be a masterstroke by the company. As an inevitable result, by 2018, it had 1.5 crores (15 million) users and 9, 00,000 paid users.

show more

Byju Raveendran, from Azhikode, a coastal village in Kerala, was an engineer with a British shipping corporation when he started helping a few friends in cracking the entrance test to the IIMs using his methodological aptitudes. Interestingly, he championed the test himself, scoring 100 percentile, but did not unite any of the IIMs.

Starting with miniature groups of students he graduated to instructing from huge auditoriums and stadiums, and then via VSAT. He initiated Byju’s-The Learning App in 2015. Byju’s is at the present looking to make bigger to the United States of America, United Kingdom, South Africa and other African and Commonwealth markets. It is by now present in the Middle East.

The eight-member gang has shaped the single-man variety into a energy to suppose with in India’s blossoming edtech space.

The story is more often than not the same— hearing ramble reviews about ‘Byju sir’ who taught maths to students trying to fracture the access test to the leader Indian Institute of Management, original skepticism about his mass teaching methods, and, lastly, feeling the disparity.

Pravin Prakash, the other icon, was warned sufficient to abstain from addressing Byju Raveendran as ‘sir’ at a presser in Bengaluru last month. Byju’s, the edtech startup, was announcing an update to its learning app and Prakash was tasked with introduction to Raveendran. Prakash, now chief marketing officer at Byju’s, belongs to a nucleus team of previous students who had joined Raveendran in the early hours in his bring into being journey.

Arjun Mohan is now the vice president of marketing at Byju’s, heard about Raveendran while a student at the National Institute of Technology, Calicut. He took a demonstration session and was impressed adequately to sign up for the classes. He cracked the check and joined IIM, Kozhikode.

While a student and later while employed with timepiece and jeweler makers like Titan, Mohan helped Raveendran generate content and systematize classes in his auxiliary time. Mohan finally joined Byju’s fulltime last year as the company was establishing itself as India’s major education-technology get underway.

show less

Byju’s and Its Courses: Are They Access Friendly?

Byjus covers a vast range of courses. It starts training from class 1 and covers till class 12 for school education. It takes up all the academic responisibilities for the students belonging to both CBSE and ICSE boards. They keep an eye on the below points always undr prime focus by the CBSE board:

CBSE class 12 board exams were conducted from 15th Feb 2020 to 30th March 2020, and class 10 board exams were conducted from 15th Feb 2020 to 20th March 2020. But due to COVID-19 pandemic, exams were only conducted for a few subjects and for other subjects exams got cancelled.
The results for class 12 and class 10 were declared on 13th July 2020 and 15th July 2020, respectively.
The board has also revised the CBSE syllabus by keeping in mind the current situation of the novel Coronavirus. The syllabus of class 9 to 12 has been reduced by 30% with core concepts retained as the academic session will start late this year.
The new education policy 2020 has been announced, which brings several major reforms in the Indian education system. Among the major reform, the 10+2 structure in the schooling system is the one which has been replaced by a 5+3+3+4 structure.

Students are advised to focus on self-learning and exploring new things by themselves.

It takes equal care to the students of ICSE board as well. The ICSE syllabus is well-structured, comprehensive and aims to build analytical skills and practical knowledge to its students. Byju’s acknowledges that the ICSE Board is known for its vast syllabus, and students must give importance to all the subjects. Therefore the company focuses on a detailed study of each subject which helps students to have the flexibility of selecting specific subjects in higher classes.

The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education also considers the internal assessments to be very important for a student’s development. The practical exam results are aggregated with the student’s overall score. These particular detailing is promised to be taken care of by the Byju’s.

Not only this, but Byju’s also arranges special classes and technical, time management oriented guidance for JEE, NEET, JEE mains and Advanced and so on. It takes special take of the NCERT syllabus and all aspired prospects as are very important scoring factors for the students appearing for such programs. While giving training to the class 11 and class 12 students, Byju’s have expanded their faculty to the Arts and Commerce sects as well. In order to complete the preparation for the board exams, Byju arranges for mock tests and also provides sample papers for the greater benefit of the students. The teachers of the company also make students solve at least the last five years’ CBSE and ISC papers for the boards.

More importantly, Byju’s take the huge initiative for preparing students for the aspiring IAS and CAT exams. We all know about the several difficult steps one has to cross over to get through such exams. ‘Byju’s’ promises to arrange for the personality development aspects for the IAS and CAT aspirants as well.

Why should you join Byju’s?

Byju arranges for up to 100% scholarships for the students of class 5 up to IAS aspirants. BNAT is the entrance test taken by Byju’s. They are designed in an MCQ format to evaluate a student’s in-depth knowledge, aptitudes and personality development parameters. This all India based entrance examination helps to identify and measure the Learning skills such as as- Application, Retention, Numerical Reasoning, Logical Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning tests to assist the actual learning potential of a student.

Byju’s promise to take care of the skill development settings and measures taken up by the company as follows:

Analyze your strengths and key areas of improvement
Assess their understanding of basic concepts.
Benchmark themselves against other students at the state and All-India Level.
Understand the gaps in their preparation for future competitive exams and take corrective actions.
Scorecard showing their Percentile, Subject-wise Analytics, and Subject-wise improvement points.

The process of taking BNAT is as below-

BNAT has to be taken online. The test will be conducted on the BYJU’S website on 13 Dec 2020.
Timings would be:

Class 4-5	10 AM – 10:45 AM
Class 6-7	12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Class 8-9	3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Class 10	5:30 PM – 7 PM

To log in, students must use their mobile number and the system-generated password. BNAT can be taken on any Laptop, Desktop, Mobile Phone or Tablet. For the best user experience, we recommend an updated Chrome browser. Kindly check your device, browser and your internet connection, to make sure you get a hassle-free testing experience.

The Learning App draws the concentration of the students by the pioneering videos created. The videos give to the point narrative about the topic and chiefly try to spotlight on the chief key points. It gives the students an indispensable introduction and presents a quantity of picture charts with the imperative information that is to be remembered by the apprentice. To keep the student in a velocity it provides the student with some questions correlated to the topic and is gifted to resolve whether the student has understood the matter well or not and then lets the student shift on to the subsequently put topic.

At the end of the section the app provides a performance and practice section in which the student can carry out plentiful question to accomplish a mastery in the scrupulous chapter. Whenever the app feels to have figured out the frail point of the student it repeats the matter that the student needs to hub on to lose misgiving. Moreover, it builds the fundamental display place for the student to prop up the upcoming information that is to be specified.

The short steps to start using Byju’s app-

You can easily install Byju’s: The Learning App from the Google play store or the app store or the ios devices. Register yourself as a user and you will be able to watch the free videos or use a coupon if you have one.
The other way is buying a package of Byju’s: The Learning App which gives much more benefits to the free app.
Or either you can buy the Byju’s Tablet program which supports Byju’s premium.
Taking admission in Byju’s classes also gives Byju’s: The Learning App as a part of student’s material.

Things to shock you about Byju’s

BYJU’s is the content tech company which cares all about making the first purchase, while true education is anything but a banner for it. India has roughly 71MM students in coaching classes and ~250MM students. BYJU needs to only sell 1% of the market on one occasion to reach a billion dollars (2.5MM students). You now can begin to see why it is such a witty business model, given the size of the market.

show more

The company calls it a subscription, it is in reality an annual purchase which forces a larger ticket size. Even if the patron purchases just once, BYJU’s is already money-making on the customer. If the customer does not refurbish, the market is big adequately to acquire a lot more customers. Additionally, the character of natural churn in the market i.e. students who graduate from classes will not need BYJU’s actually helps it. New customers keep coming in, and the market has little “memory” on product quality.

Feedback on a “bad product” is also fluffy because the user is dissimilar from the customer, and bad learning could also be accredited to a “bad” student. Evidently, appointment is not even compulsory – all the business needs to do is make that first sale. For the dumpy term, very good marketing can make the company grow rapidly. But we want question about it’s promises on good learning.

show less

Challenges in Online Learning by Byju’s

Comparing face-to-face learning with online learning brings forth significant deficiencies in the online mode such as lack of human connect, absence of opportunities of collaborative learning, teacher supervision and the most glaring being lack of opportunities for hands-on learning in complex subjects such as science and mathematics. Byju’s does not arrange any sort of unique technique or infrastructural modification to function upon this default of e-learning.

Is the Quality Online Learning maintained by Byju’s?

What is ‘quality’ in online learning? The definition of Quality education has undergone a metamorphosis in the online mode, and now it includes the ICT components that help overcome all the challenges have resulted due to the physical distance between the teacher and the learner. Byju’s has the power and potential to help the users overcome not only these challenges but also make some unexpected value additions to classes that could result in an improved teacher and learner performance, leading to an enhanced learning experience. But they need to invest more and profitless to develop their set-up to this level of learning. It is as we are saying more devoted to making a profit rather than provided quality education as it promises.

Plan Active Learning

“It’s not a lecture classroom online,”. “It’s an active learning classroom online.” A management staff of Byju’s confers. It has been observed that sometimes to overcome the lack of their physical presence teachers go into long winding explanations of the concept in an online class by Byju’s, leaving learners passive, bored, and ultimately distracted. The online class should have a well-planned sequence of activities for active engagement’ that allows the leaners of opportunities for interaction and hands-on, experiential learning. The following strategies would help in creating opportunities for active learner engagement with content and peers. But, there no such point of coverage in the Byju’s company goals or strategies.

Byju’s provide no choice for the learner

Traditional classes are teacher-driven and all the decisions regarding what, when, how, and how much are taken by the teacher. In Byju’s class, the teacher can enhance learner motivation, interest, and involvement by allowing them to choose ‘how to learn’. The choice of activities can range from audio/video podcasts, presentations, surveys, investigatory projects, quizzes, gamification, reports with illustrations and graphics, news-reporting, producing a radio/TV show, etc. Depending upon the skills and subskills that need to be taught or reinforced the learners could be asked to choose and collaborate on the assignment. But there is no such provision given by Byju’s. The learners are under absolure control and dictation over their choice of Learning method upon Byju’s.

Byju’s Feedback Vs Feed-forward technique

Feedback gives suggestions to improve the observed processes, in retrospect, by telling learners how they can improve the assignment that has been concluded. Research reveals that students hardly revisit their assignments to check teachers’ suggestions and comments.

Feed-forward model is future-focused and inculcates ideas about what a learner or teacher can do differently with the assignment on hand. Teachers share the assessment criteria and inform learners of what is expected and subsequently mark them accordingly. A valuable outcome of feed-forward technique is learners constantly reflect on their output and make self-assessment. Feed-forward process would ensure better learning outcomes in the online mode, as the teaching time for a teacher is at a premium.

Teacher Performances at Byju’s

All schools are closed during the lockdown restrictions, relieving teachers of their sundry administrative duties and making them free to devote their undivided attention to creatively design their on-line learning plans. Awareness that classes are open to public and parental scrutiny has made the teachers conscious of delivering their best in online classes.

Nevertheless, switching over to the online mode of teaching is a huge challenge for teachers where Byju’s teachers are proclaimed to be highly traned. Yet, a range of complaints were coming forth about the teaching service provided by Byju’s during this hard course of time.

PR Reviews

Byju’s has played a masterstroke by keeping Shahrukh Khan as its brand ambassador. Switch on the tv and you can see him coming up with loads of testimonies about Byju’s. But please have a look here to see the other side of the coin where Byju’s failed to do its minimum task even during the emergency of lockdown due to covid. Below are provided with some snippet of reviewers who have been direct victims of Byju’s odd manners and problematic management.