Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO of Byju’s, has won the IMPACT Person of the Year, 2019 Award, instituted by the exchange4media Group to recognize excellence in the Advertising, Media and Marketing domain. He wins the award for revolutionising the online learning ecosystem, changing the way India learns by pioneering ‘personalized learning’, building a high value impactful business enterprise as well as a powerful brand. Under Raveendran’s leadership, the start-up company saw a meteoric rise and is today valued at $8 billion.
To him goes the credit for identifying a gap need, and moving to trace the learning fingerprint and proficiency of each and every student to create a personalized learning experience for them through the BYJU’s app. Not only does he help students make the most out of their learning journey, but makes them ‘fall in love with learning’, which is his mission.
IMPACT Person of the Year 2019
Commenting on the IMPACT Person of the Year 2019, Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the exchange4media Group, said, “Byju Raveendran has made his passion his profession and created Byju’s into a $8 billion enterprise. Byju is undoubtedly the ‘Amazon of Education’. He has shown amazing brand-building in a category like education; getting parents to trust a learning system and pay for it takes foresight and pioneering vision. Byju reflects what IPOY stands for - innovation, leadership, scale, game-changing and collaborative partnerships. Byju’s could be the global company that emerges from India in the near future.”
The other nominees for the award this year were Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson, India Today Group, Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO, InMobi Group, CVL Srinivas, Country Manager, India, WPP, Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, Oyo Rooms, Anuj Khanna Sohum, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Affle, Dinesh Agarwal, CEO & Founder and Brijesh Agrawal, Co-founder & Director, Indiamart.
Past winners of the IPOY award – now in its 15th year – include Rajan Anandan, then MD, Google India, Baba Ramdev of Patanjali Ayurved, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO of Paytm, Arnab Goswami, then President & Editor-in-Chief, Times Now and ET Now, Punit Goenka, MD & CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd; Vineet Jain, MD, Times Group; Ambika Soni, then Minister for Information & Broadcasting; Agnello Dias, Founder, Taproot India, Haresh Chawla, then Group CEO, Network18 and Viacom18; Uday Shankar, then CEO, Star India; Raghav Bahl, Founder, Network18 and Rajdeep Sardesai, then Editor-in-Chief, CNN-IBN.
The IMPACT Person of the Year 2019 award was presented by Viacom18, with Shemaroo, 9XM, UFO Moviez and Sony SAB as co-gold partners.