'Golden age' of teachers to come back, says Byju Raveendran

The massive adoption of edtech amid the pandemic will help usher in a golden age for teachers as more educators leverage digital tools to reach students, Byjus founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said on Thursday.

The massive adoption of edtech amid the pandemic will help usher in a ''golden age'' for teachers as more educators leverage digital tools to reach students, Byju's founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said on Thursday. Speaking at a TiEcon Delhi-NCR event, Raveendran said the edutech sector is at an ''inflection point'' because of the pandemic but as the situation eases, a blended model is expected to emerge. ''It's actually a change for the good, all stakeholders are adapted very well. Teachers are using digital tools, though in the initial days it was a challenge for them to even use PPTs...parents are accepting this format...maybe for the first time in the last 100 years, our classrooms will change,'' he added. Raveendran -- who was a teacher before founding Byju's -- explained that schools will not suddenly go completely online because aspects like empathy, interaction with peers and imparting life skills happen best in an offline setup. ''Technology as an enabler, in some cases a driver. It has to be content first, teachers will always have an important role to play. Golden age of teachers, I believe, is going to come back because today anyone who wants to teach something, they can just go online and start teaching,'' he added. Talking about the business, Raveendran said the company has had a strong organic growth and its core model has continued to grow at 100 per cent year after year. ''We have the platform-plus content self-learning models, and there is an opportunity by adding this teaching layer (via acquisitions) on top, where we create these teachers for the world, and possibly define the online schools of tomorrow,'' he said. He added acquisitions also help in significantly increasing the ''founder mentality at the top'' that helps firms stay relevant for decades and differentiates good companies from great ones. ''It's never about winning the game, you have to stay in the game and have skin in the game,'' he added. In August last year, Byju's had acquired WhiteHat Jr, a startup focused on imparting coding skills to kids, for USD 300 million (about Rs 2,240 crore). There are also reports that Byju's is set to acquire brick-and-mortar education player Aakash Educational Services (AES) for USD 1 billion. Byju's has raised millions from dollars from several marquee investors, including BlackRock, T Rowe Price, Silver Lake and Tiger Global, and has seen its valuation soar to USD 12 billion.

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