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Who is Byju’s Raveendran – Byju’s CEO

Born in 1980 in Azhikode village, Kerala, India

Family Background of Byju Raveendran

Parents: Raveendran and Shobhanavalli, both physics and mathematics teachers
Brother: Riju Raveendran, who is also on the board of Byju’s
Wife: Divya Gokulnath, who was one of his former students and is now a co-founder of Byju’s. They married in 2009
Children: Two sons

Education Background Of Byju Raveendran

He attended a Malayalam medium school in Kerala, India
Byju went on to earn a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree from the Government College of Engineering, Kannur

Math Expertise

Despite attending classes less frequently, Byju mastered the subjects on his own. This is likely due to the influence of his parents who were both math and science teachers.
His strong math skills became evident when he started helping friends prepare for entrance exams like the CAT (Common Admission Test). Even though he hadn’t prepared much himself, he scored a perfect percentile on the CAT

Early Life and Career of Byju Raveendran

Upon obtaining his B.Tech from the Government College of Engineering, Kannur, he began working as a service engineer for an international shipping firm. In 2003, he assisted friends who were preparing for the CAT exam while on vacation. After that, he took the CAT test, and he received a 100th percentile score. He retook the exam and received a score in the 100th percentile once more. After helping individuals prepare for the CAT exam for another two years, he decided to leave his work due to his positive performance.
Byju established Byju’s Classrooms, a test preparation company, in 2007, and it eventually expanded to provide classrooms the size of stadiums. He met his wife, Divya Gokulnath, when she was a student in his exam prep class, and the two of them started Byju’s in 2011.
In 2015, Byju released an app designed for students to learn on portable devices in response to the growing size of smartphones. The app was made available in the US, the UK, and other English-speaking nations in October 2018. The app had over 150 million downloads by July 2022, and users were using it for 71 minutes a day on average.
Byju was in advanced negotiations to purchase Vedantu in 2021 for an estimated $600-$700 million; however, the transaction fell through because regulatory approvals were still needed.
On February 1, 2024, multiple shareholders were reported to have signed a notice calling for a general meeting to address various issues at BYJU’S, including requests to change the company’s board of directors and leadership. In February 2024, India’s economic intelligence and law enforcement entity Enforcement Directorate issued a lookout notice against Raveendran. On 23 February, shareholders voted to remove Byju as CEO, and he stated afterward that the vote was invalid due to a lack of a quorum. A previous court ruling placed the implementation of the shareholder vote on hold until after further review on 13 March 2024.