Byju Raveendran Says Will Ensure Messaging About Company Is Right; Real Message Is "Love For Learning"

 

Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO of edtech unicorn BYJU's, while speaking at YourStory's flagship event TechSparks 2020, acknowledged a question related to coding arm WhiteHat Jr's marketing campaign — that suggested children should start coding at a young age, saying the startup was taking customer feedback seriously.

In conversation with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma, Byju emphasised that the company was reviewing its marketing campaigns and its communication, and had already pulled most of WhiteHat Jr's ads off the air.

WhiteHat Jr, which BYJU's acquired for $300 million, has been receiving flak on social media, along with a spate of bad reviews after its advertisements promised young students high salaries if they learned coding. There were also advertisements that portrayed a seven-year-old app developer speaking at a TED conference, and an apparently unsubstantiated testimonial from a child who claimed to have built the world's first eye testing app.

The Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) has asked the coding startup to pull down its advertisements for making "dubious and unsubstantiated claims", a Forbes India report stated on Tuesday.

Concerned parents have said on Twitter that this kind of messaging puts unnecessary pressure on young children, is psychologically damaging, and forces them to "run a high-salary rat race" from the age of five or six, instead of being able to enjoy their childhood.

Addressing these concerns, Byju said that most of the contentious WhiteHat Jr marketing campaigns were LIVE even before BYJU's acquired the coding startup — but he added that he was making sure his team was rectifying any and all errors.

He pointed to BYJU's marketing campaigns over the last five years and said that, at least in his own startup, the message he has tried to cultivate is "love for learning".

"We’ve reduced the pressure off kids by making sure that they love learning — we don’t talk about rank holders or toppers because I strongly believe that everybody can improve — all of them won’t become toppers, but children are all still unique. Our messaging has always been love for learning," he said, reiterating, "We’ve taken the feedback seriously and we’re refining and correcting."

Sandip Ginodia , CEO

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