Byju’s Founder & His Wife Are India’s Youngest Billionaires: Rs 22,000 Cr Combined Wealth!

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According to Forbes India Rich List 2020, Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath have been ranked 46 on the list and have a combined net worth of $3.05 billion (approx Rs 22.3 thousand crores).

Byju Raveendran, a former math tutor, with his wife Divya Gokulnath founded the online ed-tech company, Byju’s in 2011.

Byju’s has a user base of 30 million students from class 4 to 12 mostly from India. The app has seen a total of 64 million downloads.

In June, Byju’s learning app entered the decacorn league (decacorn is a relatively new company that is worth at least $10 billion) after its valuation has soared to $10.5 billion amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Byju’s investors include Mark Zuckerberg Tencent and Tiger Global.

In 2019, Byju became the newest face in the Forbes Billionaire list, with a net worth of $1.9 billion.

Some Facts of India’s Youngest Billionaires!

After completing his engineering, Byju used to teach his friends maths or other students who need help with math. He would also prepare students to appear for entrance exams like the common entrance exam (CAT). In 2003, when he appeared for CAT he scored 100 percentile. After 2 years, he decided to pursue teaching as a full-time job.

In 2011, he set up Think & Learn to provide online lessons to students, before launching the main app in 2015.

Divya Gokulnath, his wife was one of Byju Raveendran’s early students. She has a bachelors in Biotechnology from RV College of Engineering in Bengaluru. After completing her bachelor’s, Divya had plans for Masters and was planning to apply to universities abroad. When searching for someone to help her sharpen her maths skills for GRE, she heard of Byju Raveendran’s classes from a friend.

After completing her GRE exam, Raveendran asked Divya to try a hand at teaching. After which she took many classes in Maths, English, and Reasoning.

After receiving her result of GRE and getting admissions to universities in the US, she decided to stay back.

Divya is now one of the board members and helps Byju run the company.

And yes this made me suprised that they have made the parents believe that if their children studies through byju surely he will get marks and also concepts…So this made me little bit surprised and shocked too????

 

The Learning App is an Indian educational technology (edtech) and online tutoring firm founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran at Bangalore. In September 2020, it was the world's most valued edtech company with a valuation of $11.1 billion.

No, Byju’s not listed in the Stock Market.

Byju’s Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said it’s an 'aspiration' for him to build a large public company out of India.

“For some of them, it’s their first investment in education so that way we are getting more and more capital into India, and showing that there is so much growth that you will see in India over the next few years.”

Byju's stock will come to market in 2021 or 2022.

 

Why did Byju's acquire WhiteHat Jr. in a $300 million all-cash deal?

BYJU'S just acquired WhiteHat Jr. for $300M in cold hard cash.

This is a monumental moment in the Indian startup ecosystem because it's the first time an Indian startup has been acquired by another Indian startup for more than $100M in cash.

We'd had deals like Ola acquiring Taxi For Sure, Snapdeal acquiring Freecharge & even Zomato acquiring UberEats. But those were all-stock deals.

All stock deals only cost a company further dilution. But taking $300M out of your bank balance to acquire another company is a wholly different ballgame.

This acquisition is proof that an Indian company at scale now has not just the ability to exit to US/ Chinese companies, but Indian companies too.

This will lead to more investments in Indian startups & will further push Startup India towards the goal of building 100's of unicorns over the next 10 years.