Can India’s troubled edutech app Byju’s retain its dominance with UAE school children, parents?

Can India’s troubled edutech app Byju’s retain its dominance with UAE school children, parents?

Dubai: India’s pre-eminent edutech app Byju’s is going through crippling financial losses, investigations by the authorities, and wavering shareholders. All through the crisis, the founder of the online tutoring portal Byju Raveendran has been insisting that the troubles will blow over and the company will rediscover its mojo. But can Byju’s do it? Will it have difficulty convincing its core audience – school children and their parents – that company’s troubles will not get in the way of Byju’s doing what it’s supposed to do – tutoring? This will have significance for Byju’s users in the UAE and Gulf markets, where the platform built a significant user base during the Covid times and when schooling became an at-home exercise. “What’s paramount is how good the customer experience is throughout,” said Imbesat Ahmad, founder and CEO at filo, a live instant tutoring platform. This is an area where Byju’s has been facing some trouble. There is also substantial competition from UAE-based players (with millions in funding) like School Hack, a ChatGPT-powered platform. The app, founded in February 2023, achieved one million users by May. The other contenders are Coded Minds and School Voice. “Events (such as what Byju’s is facing with