Byju Raveendran on Scale Before Profitability

Byju Raveendran built the Think and Learn / BYJU'S learning app into India's most valued startup and a global edtech benchmark, a trajectory that reversed sharply from 2022 onward as the firm's aggressive acquisition strategy, accounting practices and customer-retention model came under regulatory and investor scrutiny.

The case is most often read as the cautionary counterpoint to the Indian unicorn narrative: a firm whose top-line growth concealed the absence of durable unit economics, and whose founder's conviction that scale would resolve the model proved costly when capital markets closed.