Brainly embarks on its next phase of growth in India

With an objective to facilitate a collaborative community for students to share and explore knowledge in, Brainly, the world’s largest online learning community for students, parents, and teachers, has appointed Rajesh Bysani as its Chief Product Officer (CPO).

While Brainly has succeeded at establishing itself as one of India’s leading online education platforms, onboarding the product management veteran marks a significant step taken towards further strengthening its presence in the country. In his role as the CPO, Bysani will be responsible for driving the team to build world-class products in line with the company’s vision of becoming a leading global educational platform.

Prior to joining Brainly, Bysani has had a rich professional experience of over 15 years, working with both established and emerging companies across diverse profiles. Throughout his prolific career, he has been tasked with ideating, executing, and growing some of the most innovative and path-breaking products that have simplified and enriched the lives of millions of people.

Bysani said, “As the seasoned product manager who has had the first-hand experience in helping develop some of the country’s most innovative tech-based products over the past decade and a half, the guiding principle behind my work has always been the philosophy that technology exists to improve our daily lives and to help solve problems that people regularly encounter.”

Business Growth

Brainly’s ‘community learning’ model combines online education, social media, and machine learning to disrupt the $2.6 billion education market on a global level.

Within a year, the platform had succeeded in growing from 100 million active monthly users to 150 million active monthly users, serving as the much-needed ‘additional coach’ for academic learning. With headquarters in Kraków, Poland and New York City, Brainly is driven by the conviction that online learning communities can empower students all over the world with knowledge and information.

Bysani further stated, “At its core, Brainly exists to improve educational outcomes for students across the world and transfer all the benefits of real-life collaboration into a digital environment. This aligns perfectly with my enduring belief that technology has the power to transform individuals’ lives for the better, and I am beyond thrilled to work with such an innovative company that’s making a tremendous positive impact on global education in the digital age. I look forward to the opportunity to further expand on this vision, help grow and reinvent the next generation of the product, and amplify and build on this vision.”

This appointment comes at a time when Brainly has registered remarkable progress in India, with a Y-o-Y growth of over 100% and a user-base of 20 million+, doubling from its previous count of 10 million as announced in November 2018.

Further, upon mapping key trends in the Indian education landscape and discerning the true needs of students, the platform has also diversified its knowledge base with addition of content in regional languages such as Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, and Bengali, to make its material accessible for a wider audience.

Michal Borkowski, Co-Founder and CEO, Brainly, stated, “Our new CPO Rajesh Bysani is the perfect addition to our team and will be an integral part in helping us further strengthen Brainly as the platform that students and parents turn to for help. As we continue to innovate Brainly’s features and product offerings so students can better connect, learn, and explore, a crucial part of achieving that goal is ensuring we have a skilled, passionate leader like Rajesh in place to spearhead the product team. His rich experience and bold vision will help us create a more effective and relevant product for our users, and we look forward to achieving new milestones with him and seeing more and more users from around the world benefit from online learning.”

Fundraise

Brainly had raised $30 million in its last funding round led by globally-renowned technology investor Naspers. In the years 2016 and 2017, the platform had closed $15 million Series B funding and $14 million Series B-1 funding, led by Naspers and Kulczyk Investments respectively, making the total funding till date up to $68.5 million.

Brainly has been using these proceeds to enhance user experience and to create the next generation of the platform. It has also been focused on leveraging these investments to further expand its user base in India, which is one of its key markets.