M3M Hurun Global Rich List 2023 has listed Byju Raveendran as the second-richest person in the global education sector. His family, including wife Divya Gokulnath, have risen 1005 positions over the past three years on the list -- they are ranked 994th on the global list.
He runs the world's most valued ed-tech company, Byju's. The company was founded by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath in 2011. The company saw scale after they launched its application in 2015. The company is valued 22 billion dollars, which is way over Rs 1,89,000 crore. The company made headlines recently due to massive losses and job cuts. The company is also facing a potential debt crisis. He and his family own about 25 percent of the company. They last raised a round in October last year. They are reportedly in talks with creditors to secure a hefty loan in order to extricate the company from financial dire straits.
The company has around 150 million users. It had pledged to shed off around 5 percent of its workforce.
Who is Byju Raveendran?
Byju was born in Kerala in 1980. His parents were teachers. He completed his B.Tech from the Government College of Engineering, Kannur. His first job was service engineer at a shipping company. He scored 100 percentile in two successive CAT exams in the early part of 2010s. He then quit his job and started a company in 2007 that helped CAT aspirants crack the exam. He had met Gokulnath whom she met at his preparation class.
The company grew leaps and bound during the coronavirus times as children couldn't attend school for a long time. In April 2021, Byju's acquired Aakash Educational Services for 1 billion dollars.
Gokulnath also became a teacher. She is the co-founder of the company. She was born in 1987.
Divya Gokulnath began her career as a teacher in 2008 at the age of 21. Subsequently, in 2011, Divya and her husband collaborated to create the online education platform Byju's. At the beginning, Divya appeared in videos as a teacher. Her net worth is a whopping Rs 4500 crore.
The family's net worth is around 3.3 billion dollars, which translates into Rs 25000 crore.
