How does a teacher earn nearly $ 6 billion with an app?

The 37-year-old businessman said he wanted to do what The Mouse House did for entertainment in the education sector in India, and is making the biggest stride, both geographically and creatively. In his new app, famous Disney characters such as Simba, Lion King or even Anna, from Frozen, teach mathematics and English to students. The same characters play in animated videos, games, stories and interactive tests.

"Kids around the world identify with Simba or Moana from Disney, who captivate their attention before we train them to learn," said Raveendran, also president and CEO.

India is going through a dramatic period of wealth creation … and destruction. A new group of independent entrepreneurs has joined the wealthy club, helping the country's ultra-rich population grow at the fastest pace in the world.

Digital learning is booming, perhaps nowhere else than in Byju's home country, where internet use has exploded due to ubiquity cheap smartphones and discounted wireless plans. The Indian online learning market is expected to double to reach $ 5.7 billion by 2020, according to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation.

According to Anil Kumar, executive director of Redseer Management Consulting Pvt, K-12 educational technologies are one of the fastest-growing segments of the Internet market, said Anil Kumar. they are ready to take advantage of the global opportunity since they already serve a large English-speaking base and have created unique educational content, "he said.

Byju's fortune has grown with the market. Its revenue is expected to increase more than 100 percent to 30,000 million rupees ($ 435 million) in the year ending March 2020, Raveendran said. This pace of growth has already attracted the attention of the largest investors in the industry, from Naspers Ventures to Tencent Holdings Ltd. through Sequoia Capital or Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

These renowned sponsors support Raveendran's vision. The Byju founder grew up in a village on the south coast of India, where his parents were teachers. He was not a very good student and skipped clbades to go to the football field. Then I learned alone at home. He became an engineer and began helping his friends prepare for entrance exams in the best engineering and administration schools in India. Clbades grew until he finally began teaching thousands of people in sports stadiums, becoming a famous tutor who traveled between several cities on weekends.

He created Think & Learn in 2011, offering online courses before presenting his main application in 2015. The company has more than 35 million registered users, of which about 2.4 million pay an annual fee of 10,000 to 12,000 rupees, which which helped it to achieve profitability at the end of March 2019. It is at this point that Raveendran began to solicit long-term investors, such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. His most recent support is the Qatar Investment Authority. During the last funding cycle, the entrepreneur purchased shares to maintain his capital.