Golden age of teachers is going to come back: Byju Raveendran

The rapid adoption of online education due to the Covid-19 pandemic is ushering in another golden age for teachers, Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO of India’s second most valuable startup Byju’s, said in a fireside chat at an event organized by TiE's New Delhi chapter.

Raveendran, who prior to founding Byju’s was a teacher himself, said that the acceptance of online learning tools by all stakeholders - students, teachers and educational institutes - will allow anyone with an interest in teaching to go online and start conducting classes.

“Teachers will always have an important role to play. In fact, I believe a golden age of teachers is going to come back, because today anyone who wants to teach something can just go online and start teaching,” Raveendran said.


While the edtech sector has seen massive gains over the past year, helping Byju’s raise over $1 billion in funding from several marquee investors, and driving the growth and soaring valuation of its peers, Raveendran added that edtech was yet to even scratch the surface of transforming education.

Fielding a question on whether edtech will continue to grow at a similar pace going forward as schools and colleges reopen, he said that there was a lot more to be done in the sector, which is clearly visible as there still isn’t a single education company in the world valued at over $100 billion, despite being such a large sector globally.

“There are a lot of (edtech) companies starting out and the good ones are will come up and will continue growing on the other side of the crisis,” said Raveendran. “(There will be) opportunity in this sector even after 10 years.”

Coming to Byju’s own growth, Raveendran said that the company had added 45 million learners to its free platform in 2020, compared to the first 45 million free users that took four and a half years to achieve.

However, he admitted that in a sector so vast, it wasn’t possible for one company to do everything, and said he would be satisfied if Byju’s could redefine online schools of tomorrow, adding that he understands that learning in the future will be blended and the challenge is to figure out the right mix of online and offline learning.