Byju's struggles with offline coaching center growth; Nearly 60% of customers have requested refunds in the last two years

Edtech giant Byju's, which has been internally struggling with numerous challenges, in February last year, launched Byju's Tuition Center to focus on the growing offline market. 

Post-pandemic, A large portion of Indian students, who rushed to online classes during the lockdown, started going back to offline coaching centres. To tap into this opportunity, Several edtech players like Unacademy, Physics Wallah, and Vedantu began to launch online and offline learning modes for students.

Byju's, which acquired Aakash Educational Services Limited for nearly $1 billion, making it one of the largest deals in the Indian edtech sector, to expand its offline presence.

However, the company didn't grow as it was expecting and started struggling in the offline market as well. According to internal data accessed by Moneycontrol, Nearly two out of every three of Byju's Tuition Centre customers, which accounts for around 60%, have requested refunds in the past two years.

From November 9, 2021, and July 11, 2023, a total of 43,625 refund requests were submitted to Byju’s Tuition Centres. Of these, The edtech firm processed 41,198 requests, accounting for approximately 95% of the total refund requests, the report said.

It's worth mentioning that the refund requests cover a significant portion of its total number of tuition centre subscriptions which stands at nearly 75,000 so far.

However, Byj's denied the report and labelled them as “wildly inaccurate.”

The high refund request rates suggest that students and parents are dissatisfied with the quality and format of the courses offered by Byju’s Tuition Centres.

The report added that issues like inadequate installation of CCTV cameras, irregular class schedules, alleged manipulation of attendance records, and a perceived lack of communication about class cancellations and refund processes are among the core reasons for dissatisfaction and subsequently increased refund requests.

Though tuition centres were once seen as a driver of the company’s future growth, since it has put its expansion plans on hold, the growth and customer experience started declining significantly. 

Earlier this year, Byju's, which already has 300 hybrid learning centres, said it plans to open 300 more this year. In May this year, PhysicsWallah, another profitable edtech unicorn, announced the launch of 50 offline learning centres across the country.

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