| Monday, 23 January 2023 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
Welcome to a brand-new week. In our first two editions of 2023, we tackled two big whales—YouTube’s new Courses product, which threatens to upend Indian edtechs, and the bureaucracy of the National Testing Agency, that’s kept IIT aspirants in knots this year.
This week, I want to dive right into the fleshy core of what once made Indian edtech tick.
Sure, there was a need for quality content. And a need to make it all available at home, online. There was also the immense opportunity opened up by abundant cheap data and smartphone coverage. I’d argue though, that all these factors only helped grease the main lever: the immaculate edtech sales pitch.
And no one mastered the sales pitch as well as Byju’s. They didn’t just master it, they built the biggest, baddest flywheel of FOMO-to-financing-to-promised payoff in recent times—one that could put the best FMCGs to shame.
In some ways, Byju’s’ key innovation wasn’t product or content or tech.
