The dream is to make Byju the world’s top education brand, trying to reach village to village through online education
Byju’s has become one of the country’s first ‘Decacarn’ ($10 billion) company in the field of online learning. Coming from a general background of Kerala, its co-founder Byju Ravindran aims to spread education as much as possible, so that children from remote rural areas and poor sections can also get quality education. For this, he has partnered with 40 voluntary organizations from 22 states of the country.
By 2025, they intend to provide quality education to five lakh children. He believes that the post-Covid world will see a mixed form of education, in which online learning will be given equal priority along with offline. Considering himself an educator first and then an entrepreneur, Byju’s wants to make his company the world’s top education brand.
The use of technology in education has changed the way teachers teach along with the reading and writing of children. Online education became mainstream during the pandemic. This also revealed the truth that every student has his own unique tendency to take education or learn something, which can be further sharpened through e-learning. I believe that the post-Covid world will see a mixed form of education, for which we will have to innovate more. The emphasis has to be on moving from traditional education (one to many approach) to one-on-one experiences, so that apart from teaching face-to-face to the students, they can also be connected to the digital world. Technology will play the main role in the future school, which will give emphasis on direct education to the students instead of indirect. This will empower the students. Yes, the importance of schools will not be less in this. But with the help of online platform, children will be able to strengthen their foundation and concepts. They will be able to get complete education sitting at home.
When schools and educational institutions had to be temporarily closed due to Kovid, it was our endeavor to continue the education of the children. We created the content for the app, which was free. We launched ‘Byju Classes’, an online tutoring program. Apart from these, we have launched programs in Marathi, Malayalam, Bangla, Kannada language. We also included social studies in our learning programme. Through the ‘Byju Education for All’ initiative, we want to democratize education so that lakhs of children from poorer sections of the society get quality education. Under the ‘Give Program’, we encourage people to donate their old smart devices. After refurbishing those devices, Byju’s content is uploaded and distributed to children who do not have access to online education. In this way we intend to reach 5 lakh children by the year 2025.
Online learning has many advantages, but access to internet connectivity in remote areas is still a challenge. What can be the solution for this?
Filling the digital gap has been a major challenge. Even today very few children are getting quality education. This gap can be filled with technology. Through smartphone education, we can benefit children in remote areas. High bandwidth is not required to access Byju’s content. Content can be accessed via SD card. Children can also use it from 2G and 3G networks. Under the ‘Education for All’ program, we have reached out to children in rural areas who were completely deprived of education due to Kovid. Our aim is to help the girls and children of rural areas, for which we have partnered with around 40 voluntary organizations from 22 states.
-Have you been able to reach your goal in view of the large number of children in the country?
India is a vast country and has the largest number of school going children in the world. We have only reached the upper surface so far. Where education is very important for climbing the ladder of progress, this sector has been neglected. That’s why we try to meet the real needs. Since our inception, our aim has been to provide quality education to every part of the country and community. We lay emphasis on creating realistic and interactive content, using animations, game based visuals. To reach more and more students, we are creating content in regional languages to reach out to smaller cities and towns besides metro cities, so that children can study in their mother tongue.