An interesting role playing session on the Byjus case ..

At the Alliance School of Business, Bangalore, India for the third semester MBA students of operations management today I gave a very interesting team assignment in the class - a Role Play on Byju's Classes, world's top ed-tech company with a market cap of $5.5 billion operating out of Bangalore, India for the past eight years...

Yesterday I sent them a couple of news items (Forbes Sept. '09) and a case I had written on Byju's for a Conference.(click here..).

We divided the class to the different stake holders in the case,

1. Byju himself,
2. his COO Mr. Sumesh (protagonist in the case),
3. the Secy. Education, Government of India,
4. University Grants Commission (UGC) and
5. the venture capitalists led by Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund ($150 million) and South Africa's Nasper ($540 million) of the total $1050 venture capital in Byju's.

As a faculty member I took the role of the public and the teaching faculty.

To start with the public was interested in knowing what were the operational preferences for Byjus and how he planned to scale up his operations and expand in India and abroad. Byju (holding 28% stake in Byjus) started talking of his passion for teaching and how he spoke to venture capitalists and got them interested in Byjus.

The public was keen to know why Byju's was only in the conventional area and restricting itself to just the primary, upper primary, high school and secondary school sections providing learning content augmenting classroom teaching and not to the degree colleges and higher education in the country. Byju is also in the competitive exam area that decides on entry to the Indian institutes of Technology through the Joint Entrance exam (JEE) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) through the Common Admission Test (CAT), besides medical entrance exam NEET and Civil service preparation examination for IAS and other central government services of Gazetted positions.. 

The present trend is to have physical class rooms and physical Universities but Byju's is not interested in promoting any physical infrastructure facilities. Instead he is looking at virtual university. The idea was still in the drawing stages and needs lot of deliberations with the authorities before going public.

The venture capitalists who together hold almost 72% of Byju's are interested in seeing Byju's expand nationally and globally. The Secretary of Education, GoI was very cooperative and promised full support in terms of opening up an alliance between Byju's and GoI to reach out to govt schools.

The venture capitalists were urging Byju to scale up vigorously so that their share would increase in value. Byju's was treading the middle ground looking at satisfying the interests of the venture capitalists as also the bureaucrats in the education department of government and the regulating agency University Grants Commission (UGC).  UGC was mentioning how Byjus is welcome to the conventional educational system through virtual universities without compromising on the value of education.

From the public, some were concerned whether due to excess privatisation of education, education would be a tradeable and priced commodity and would lose its real worth and not reach the poorer and weaker sections of society who would be left behind. Some members of the public also asked how Byju's would handle private competition from may be other ed-tech startups in the near future to which Byju replied with confidence that they already have a 7 year advantage to those firms and there is enough space in the school and higher secondary school area that it could accommodate another couple of major players in the area. Byju reaffirmed that he does not believe in monopolising the education sector in the country.

The public was interested in knowing whether Byju's was planning to scale up in terms of revenue (what the venture capitalist wants) or scale up in terms of subscriptions to ensure consistency and be effective to more and more youngsters entering the school and Higher secondary education system in the country. The government bureaucrats from Department of Education, Government of India and UGC were of the opinion that Byju's should be ready to offer affordable courses to the public in order to survive in the long run. Byju additionally being from a very middle class family in North Kerala (now with his stake in Byju's worth approximately INR 10,000 crores or $1.4 billion) is fully aware of his humble beginnings and wants to create the world's largest, affordable, ethical and most effective education giant and make a difference to the education sector of the world ..
 

The COO spoke of how he was planning to scale and go international in the near future given the wide public approval for the technology mediated education programmes provided by Byju's. Some members of the public wanted Byju to collaborate with global Universities and offer short term courses that would improve the skills level of the students.

Given that Byjus is the top ed-tech company of the world with market cap of $5.5 billion and almost double that of the #2 player of the world VIPKID from China at $3 billion and far ahead of Coursera, the only other non Chinese entry in the top ten list at #9 (as published in Forbes Sept. '09), it is both a matter of pride and concern for the government of India that Byjus from Bangalore is ruling the ed-tech market around the world.

George..