With more than a $22-billion valuation, edtech (education technology) decacorn BYJU’S is steering its way ahead at a fast pace in the post-COVID era. Leveraging the boom in online education in India and international markets, the company is consistently aimed at building value for learners on the platform.
On day 1 of the Future of Work conference 2022, Anil Goyal, President Technology, BYJU’S Group, took a deep dive into BYJU’S product and design thinking to bring the best of both online and offline to its students.
“Asynchronous learning has been our primary focus until a couple of years ago. And there, we have really created a compelling experience through personalised journeys for students. Also, through technology, we are able to understand how and when each student is learning the concept and based on that we can adapt to the material, can adapt to the pace, can adapt to the flow of events, and that helps us get better student outcomes,” said Anil.
BYJU’S: Key areas in focus
BYJU’S is currently targeting more than 600 million internet users in India, a category which is slated to grow at 45 percent to 850 million users. In the next two, three years, smartphone adoption will continue to increase with over 400 million users.
In order to make education accessible to all, BYJU’S is offering learning solutions in a lot of regional languages, including Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada and more.
Under its initiative, ‘Education for all’, the company is further optimising its solutions for low-bandwidth and offline education, offering content on SD Cards for areas where connectivity is a larger issue.
“Today, there are 3.4 million students who are learning through our Education for All initiative in remote parts of India. And that number will grow to 10 million by 2025,” he added.
The team has also recently started with the two-teacher model to simulate an offline classroom experience.
Key technology trends in edtech
Anil believes that machine learning (ML) is becoming an important part of learning through AR/VR/Mixed Reality, enabling to create much more compelling experiences for students. Further, gamification helps students understand concepts easier and engage better while promoting creativity and collaboration.
Next, he sees artificial intelligence (AI) as one of the key technologies to understand each student's unique needs, learning abilities, and tailor the learning module to their needs. Also, other data-related technologies are going to be a significant driver of better learning outcomes.
“In my career, one of the key learnings has always been about the consumer. In this case, it's about students, and not about technology. Technology has to help solve each consumer's needs. And when you work with customers backwards, when you work with students backwards, you are always going to find ways to solve a problem in better, more interesting ways. And technology always helps accelerate that,” he signed off.
Edited by Sanhati Banerjee