Thread by @iluvcranberries

“The future of learning is about creating lifelong learners”

Key takeaways from BYJU’s fireside on Building a multinational edtech startup from India
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#ByjuRaveendran @SharmaShradha @YourStoryCo #TechSparks2020 #TechSparksFromHome

Online learning is pull and not push based. We want to create a love for learning and move students away from the fear of exams.

70% of students today have access to a screen. For the 30% it's unfortunately been a year of learning loss.

Making sure that students have access to good teachers can change the education dynamic in India. Digital has the power to solve the problem of access to good teachers and education especially for rural India.

How we can make sure more students have access to a device:
For every paying student we want to teach 1 student for free, without cannibalising our business model. We want to do this by asking people to donate their idle devices at home. We need partners to help us solve this.

There is no Amazon or Google equivalent in the edtech sector yet. We are nowhere close to saturation in edtech.

There’s never been a better time to invest & solve for edtech. There is no 100 billion edtech startup yet. It’s a tough sector to work with, but has incredible potential with every age group and geography.

Two types of opportunities
➡️Teacher-independent content where students learn on their own
➡️Teacher-led content where students mentored/taught by teachers

3 pillars of partnership options for BYJU’S:
➡️More subjects
➡️More age groups
➡️More geographies

I’m bullish about what tech can do for education. I believe education is a key pillar of change and transformation.

On improving the product and staying relevant and meaningful:
➡️Own your content and have better control over quality
➡️Make it student-centered
➡️Always be on the side of the student
➡️Be self critical
➡️Build to last for decades

Where is BYJU’S deploying its raised capital?
➡️Our core model is self sustaining and profitable.
➡️Capital raised will be used for inorganic opportunities and to scale the model.

Edtech is one sector where there are not many success stories outside China.

On getting kids to learn coding:
➡️We want our message be about the love for coding and learning. Our aim has always been to reduce the pressure on kids.

Only 23% of women are in the workforce while around 50% of our graduates are women. There’s a huge opportunity in addressing this.

In the last 6 months there have been over 20,000 teacher jobs created for women on our platforms.

Learning during the pandemic:
➡️The power of compounding relationships with the people you work with.
➡️If you forget the people that got you from 0 to 1 even you will lose your culture.

On aspirations and goals:
➡️Keep an aspiration level you can never reach.
➡️If you only set achievable goals, the game is over.
➡️Break it down to annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals.