‘The Learning Trap’ shows the dangers of a fractured education system and corporate teaching

It’s not every day that you read a book about an ed-tech company that’s as gripping as a Netflix documentary about an unhinged and corrupt cult. But Pradip K Saha’s The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech For a Ride juggles suspense and creativity to tell a shocking story of the corporate world. Saha recounts how Byju’s grew from a small coaching institution 15 years ago to reach its peak as India’s highest-valued ed-tech startup, and discusses the different reasons that led to its steep decline. The Learning Trap is a mix of an extended profile of the company’s founder, Byju Raveendran and investigative journalism. As a result, Saha can peel back the layers on the mindbogglingly obfuscated records of one of the country’s most visible businesses. Raveendran’s journey from teacher to ed-tech mogul and the rise and fall of Byju’s is a clear indicator of why the Indian education system has failed so spectacularly.

For the ‘average’ student

The foundation of Byju’s initial success, as Saha tells us, is that it responded to the needs of critically underserved students neglected by schooling systems. Saha chronicles the journey of Byju’s from its inception while comparing it to the fates of other ed-tech companies like Toppr and other offline coaching ventures. His interviews with Raveendran reveal how Byju’s was envisioned as a solution to a broken system, where private coaching betrays the interests of the average learner by creating multiple levels of stratification and creating new gaps along the way. Raveendran articulates the problem when he tells Saha: “The best teachers go to the top sections to teach the best students. And the best-performing students get their fees refunded. So I am thinking from the perspective of a parent of an average student: what is happening here? My child is paying the full fees to get the worst teacher and to subsidise the fee of the best student.”

Byju’s was unique as the focus of their pedagogy was learning instead of simply scoring high marks. As a result, Byju Raveendran’s mathematics classrooms grew from single rooms to packed stadiums and led to an internet-based empire of learners, with the promise to “Make Learning Fun”. Byju’s mobilised technology to provide gamefied learning, and animated visualisations of complex mathematics, and created an ed-tech company with global aspirations. The problem was that they overpromised and underdelivered.

Saha’s insights into the private coaching businesses across the country show the desperation of the Indian population to access good quality education to unlock the socio-economic mobility that comes from attending an elite STEM or professional educational institution. In India, entry to these institutions is so competitive that there is an entire industry aimed at preparing students for exams, with some cities being considered meccas for aspirants of examinations such as the NEET, JEE, and CAT. Of these, most contain a mathematics component, a logical reasoning component, and other sections aimed at assessing specific skills for specific professional futures. Most aspirants who write these exams say that “cracking” them is an entirely different ball game from studying to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. Of the millions that sit for these exams, only a few thousand get in.

Private coaching firms use these odds to manipulate parents who are nervous about their children’s futures, convincing many to start as young as grade six or to remove their children from regular schools and enrol them in dummy schools so they can focus all their time, energy, and attention at these coaching centres. Saha tells us about how Byju’s promised to democratise this system with coaching anyone could access, free from the burden of having to go to certain cities to become “successful”. The initial success of Byju’s was thanks to lessons being taught using audio-visual tools. The pandemic further accelerated this success, for Byju’s and ed-tech in general. With everything going for them at one point, Byju’s failure seems like a surprise.

The nightmare begins

But when Saha reveals the lies, financial manipulation, skyrocketing advertising expenditures, and Byju Raveendran’s tendency to answer questions without actually divulging any information, the brand takes on the appearance of a cult. Saha quotes Thorstein Veblen in the book to lay out how American capitalism has always involved an element of dishonesty. “The arts of business are the arts of bargaining, effrontery, salesmanship, make believe and are directed to the gain of the businessman at the cost of the community, at large”. It is only when he reveals the barefaced lies that Byju Raveendran has told journalists, colleagues and investors about the company to ensure high valuations, that we begin to learn the extent of Byju’s unethical dealings.

This is evidenced by the first-person accounts of Business Development Executives, most of whom are fresh graduates tasked with sales. As Saha interviews the sales executives tasked with pushing Byju’s subscriptions to parents, we learn about the factors surrounding some of these sales calls. As sales executives manipulate parents into purchasing Byju’s classes for their children, many parents go into debt traps as they are unable to afford the high fees, and cancellation is next to impossible even though the executives are quick to promise refunds or discounts (which they term “scholarships”).

Saha also reveals how a toxic work environment that insists on sales targets being met at any cost results in sales executives purchasing subscriptions out of their own pockets to show targets being met, and then getting refunds, and continuing this cycle to inflate the company’s numbers. Even for those familiar with how unfair and unethical the ed-tech ecosystem can be, the book is a revelation about the sheer scale of toxicity within Byju’s sales and business development teams and the incessant harassment of parents.

This gets worse when Byju’s finances are exposed, and Saha tells readers about the phantom investments Raveendran announced to boost valuations. The discrepancies in Byju’s records show how Byju Raveendran’s grandiose statements without any evidence put a nail into Byju’s coffin. With each chapter – the book is chronological – we learn how poorly organised, deeply untrustworthy, and greedy a company masquerading as an evangelist of education can become. As the company’s house of cards crumbles under Saha’s scrutiny, the reader appreciates how the author has dissected the company’s records in granular detail, to expose the logical inconsistencies in their public dealings.

A losing battle

Saha’s book is the extension of his reporting on Byju’s for The Morning Context, and the result of years of scrutiny of the company’s policies, people, and performance. From being a company that started with an aim of democratising education by going digital, to now establishing offline coaching centres and acquiring several traditional coachings, Byju’s is just one of the many examples of a sudden turnaround in India’s ed-tech ecosystem. Through Byju’s, Saha identifies the problems within the ed-tech sector and also reveals important insights into how businesses are run and funded, and how such companies turn education into a commodity. The commodification of education, treating learners as customers, and a measly investment in the quality of teaching ensures that ed-tech companies suffer the same problems as brick-and-mortar educational institutions.

However, despite the incredible reportage, which extends as recently as late 2023, Saha’s conclusions about the education system, and its opportunities and challenges, feel somewhat underdeveloped. Despite critiquing Byju’s treatment of education as a commodity, Saha also seems to treat it as one. In focusing excessively in the conclusion on the business aspect, Saha does not engage with the core challenge that made Byju’s seem like it was necessary. To do so would require explaining how education systems themselves have evolved in India, without limiting that context to a few paragraphs.

Taylor Sherman, for instance, argues that education was neglected by the State during independence and shows how the growth of educational institutions in the new republic became the responsibility of private individuals, creating vast inequalities in the sector. Martha Nussbaum, on the other hand, challenges the very premise of the profit-based education system that has created the rat race such firms exploit and argues for the liberal arts and India’s rich tradition of critical thinking, in her book Not For Profit: Why Education Needs the Humanities. Nussbaum’s work is especially relevant when trying to understand how a company like Byju’s got away with being so unethical, and why Indian markets are bound to repeat this mistake.

It may help with predicting the future of ed-tech in India more comprehensively than Saha’s conclusions of the problems with the sector. Moving the focus from skills to values also helps re-evaluate the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence in ed-tech. But for those who may not care for pedagogy, Saha covers immense ground in his understanding of the sector’s present and past. His book may be considered essential reading for anyone interested in the ethical, geopolitical, and financial factors that have contributed to the rise of ed-tech in India, and the costs at which ed-tech has achieved this growth.

The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech For a Ride, Pradip K Saha, Juggernaut Books.