Byjus’ secret weapon!

How much you grow as a business depends on how scalable your business is.

Every business has the potential to be scalable, but some are by default, and some need a lot of planning and sheer effort to make it possible.

If you are running a very successful institute in your area with 10,000 students and have been in the field for more than 20 years, the moment you start thinking of scaling your business, you will start scratching your head. It’s kinda starting your business all over again. Doing all the hustle once again. From thinking about bringing good and quality teachers to your institution to developing new classroom furniture and keeping the quality of your institution and its experience intact. As the name of your institution is on the line, it may hinder your hard-earned reputation in the past 20 years.

However, if you are running a successful online education course with 10000 paying students, and if you want to expand it up to, say, 1 million paying users, all you need is a great marketing plan (generally a few good digital media marketing campaigns would suffice) and a little more investment in your servers. That’s it. No new teachers, no classrooms, and not even HRs. And most importantly, the quality and experience of your teaching will remain almost the same.

It seems impossible to expand an offline institute, but many have done this. However, when I think of the way of education in India, particularly on the modes of teaching (offline and online) and its scalability, this unique business deal comes to my mind: The Byjus Akash Deal. An astonishing 1 Billion USD deal in 2021, in which just a 10 years old company (Byjus founded in 2011) bought a renowned 33 years old tutorial chain company Akash (founded in 1988).

I know. You must be thinking about what made Byjus so successful that it has become the world’s largest edtech company with a valuation of 16.5 Billion USD in 2021.

The most obvious answer would be the epidemic that made us all at home, COVID 19. Having no way to go to school, students across the country started taking online classes, and Byjus took the best advantage of the same.

But there is more to the story. I wonder, there were so many others as well in this line, but why only Byjus?

You may say, “well, Durgesh, Byjus was already one of the leading giants in this area, and so people trusted their course more. Simple”.

Only if it was that simple. You must read some of the reviews of Byjus from the parents and their staff (especially those doing the heavy lifting of sales).

But despite all the bad publicity in the market, it kept climbing the stars.

This simply suggests that Byjus had something more than what others didn’t.

Being an online tutoring company, Byjus is by design a scalable company and has already imposed many good working processes with an experienced sales team backed heavily by a series of software to automate and ease up their business processes.

The process they implemented in different departments like sales, marketing, HR, creating and publishing content, and their quality analysis made all the difference. Moreover, their high dependability on software made it all intact, which ensured that all the processes imposed by the management got implemented on the ground level rigorously.

After all, machines don’t make errors, but humans do.

So, what’s in it for your business?

• Scalable by default – make sure your vision for the business is compatible with the online mode of operation or can be scaled up to millions without doing it all again from scratch.
• Standard operating procedures – try to find out standard operating procedures in different departments in your institution.
• Measure your progress – always measure your progress. It will keep you motivated and allows you to know which strategy is working the best.
• Automate your processes – Automate as many processes in your company as possible. This will not only reduce your expenditure but also make your employees productive.
• Keep innovating – innovation is the key to success. The only way to be in the market for a long time passes through the wheel of innovation. The day you stop innovating, your competition will outgrow you (as is evident from the Akash institute case earlier).

You just need the right tools and a better understanding to succeed in your business. So keep learning, keep growing.