The Importance of Being Mission-Driven, and How It Worked for Us at BYJU’S

How can we help children learn better?

Nine years ago, on the cusp of a new journey, a group of teachers had this question playing on our minds. From being passionate students to wearing the teaching cap ourselves, we felt that there was scope to create better, more accessible learning experiences for students in India keeping in mind their different learning styles. There was talent in our country’s classrooms, talent that we had seen ourselves, that could reach exponential heights if it was empowered with the right way of learning. As teachers, we wanted to enable this talent and give our students the right resources.

As we explored ways to help children learn better we realised the answer laid in bringing the future of learning to the present and making every student fall in love with learning.

We believed that when children learn for the joy of exploring something new instead of the fear of exams, their learning would last beyond exams. That’s how equipping, empowering and helping children learn better became our core mission.

 Over the years, as we earned the trust of millions of students, our work remained anchored to our mission. I believe that it is this anchorage that has helped us grow at BYJU’S. And while being a mission-driven company has long known to carry multiple benefits, staying a mission-driven company is its own journey. Today, I’d like to share with you a few ways in which we keep our mission relevant and alive at BYJU’S.

A thriving core

We have been teaching for a decade at BYJU’S. But what makes us unique is that our core team has been teaching long before BYJU’S in its current shape took form. Having a core team of teachers helps us understand the pulse of our students. We understand the hurdles they face, and the push they need to get over those challenges. Added to this, the fact that the founding core members of BYJU’S are all still with the company gives us that added stability and continuum within our teams as we make our way towards helping children learn better.

Existential flexibility

At BYJU’S, we also take existential flexibility very seriously. We stay fixated on our goals and mission,  but are very flexible with execution. The approach we follow helps us strike a balance with our mission while giving ourselves the liberty to disrupt our own model time and again. We did this when we moved from an offline to an online medium and more recently we did this when we moved from being a learning app to a full-fledged online learning + tutoring platform in the face of a pandemic. Every time we disrupt ourselves, we are faced with taking a peek under the hood and finding our mission of helping students at our core - that acts as a powerful reinforcement.

Student connect

Student love is what we thrive on. We are where we are because of their confidence, faith and belief in us. We know we have a long way to go and that we need to impact many more students, but some stories that we come across make us believe more and more in the work that we are doing. 

Whether it's the young Vazeela S from Kerala who was able to continue learning,  when hospitalized from an accident or the ambitious Sakshi from Haryana who is fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor by studying with us; knowing the impact that BYJU’S makes in everyday life makes us aspire higher and higher. It never lets us lose sight of what comes first - student progress & delight!

We have had our fair share of hits and misses but what marks us as a mission-driven company is learning from the times that we couldn’t hit the mark. Nothing comes above our goal of helping children learn better and whatever feedback and criticism we receive helps us constantly aim higher and do better.  It’s our mission that’s the secret ingredient in helping us grow, and seeing more students join our family of learning only motivates us to stay true to it.