BYJU’s Claims 2X Revenue Growth In FY20 As Paid Users Increase To 3.5 Mn

Bengaluru-based edtech major BYJU’s posted revenue of INR 2,800 Cr in the financial year ending March 2020, cofounder Divya Gokulnath said. This is more than a 2X growth from INR 1,341 Cr posted by the company for the financial year 2019.

Gokulnath told Business Insider that BYJU’s added more than 13.5 Mn users in March and April. It is worth noting that the company had made its learning product free for all even before the nationwide lockdown was announced in India. As of now, BYJU’s has over 50 Mn registered users and around 3.5 Mn of them have paid for the edtech content offered by the company.

Moreover, the engagement rate has increased significantly during the lockdown. Gokulnath said that students, who used to spend 70 minutes on the application per session and come back twice-thrice a week, are now spending around 100 minutes per day. She also claimed that 85% of the students renew the courses year after year. “This is happening because parents see the effectiveness,” she added.

In the lockdown period, BYJU’s has started three new features — live classes, teaching new subjects such as history, civics and geography and launching the application in vernacular languages.

Gokulnath said that nobody predicted how things would be. “We have opened up a lot of business avenues which we forecasted, it’s just that it’s happening earlier than what we thought. Right now, we are taking one day at a time. We have weekly goals and we break them down into daily goals,” she added.

Founded in 2008 by Gokulnath and Byju Raveendran, BYJU’S offers a learning app, which was launched in 2015 and has learning programmes for students in classes IV-XII along with courses to help students prepare for competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.

In December last year, the company had announced that it turned profitable, majorly due to the deeper penetration across the country and an increase in the overall number of paid users.

According to a report by TechCrunch, BYJU’s is in talks to raise around $400 Mn in fresh capital at a $10 Bn valuation. With this, BYJU’s is going to become the third Indian startup to have achieved the tag of decacorn, after payments giant Paytm and hospitality major OYO.

Meanwhile, the company is also looking for international expansion in the coming months. Gokulnath said, “We are planning to go international in the next few months but we are also going deeper in India. 65% of our students are outside the top 10 cities.”

Interestingly, BYJU’S had forayed into the US with the acquisition of Osmo, a US-based learning platform in January 2019. Over the last year, the company’s fundraising has focused on international expansion. The expansion to the Middle East, the US, the UK, South Africa and other African and Commonwealth markets have been on the cards for the company.