The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride by journalist Pradip K. Saha has won the seventh 2024 BBLF CK Prahalad Best Business Book Award. This was announced at the 10th edition of the Bangalore Business Literature Festival on 14 September 2024. The award was presented by Ajai Chowdhry, co-founder of HCL Ltd. The awardee gets a cash prize of Rs. One lakh and a certificate.
This book was chosen by a jury among the five shortlisted books – Office Secrets: 50 Human Truths You Should Absolutely Know by Harish Bhat; Startup to Proficorn: A Private, Bootstrapped, Profitable and Highly Valuable Venture by Rajesh Jain; Just Aspire: Notes on Technology, Entrepreneurship and the Future by Ajai Chowdhry and Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future by Raghuram G Rajan and Rohit Lamba.
The jury included journalist and climate activist Madhur Singh, innovation consultant Bhupendra Sharma and IIM Ahmedabad professor Mukesh Sood. The BBLF CK Prahalad Best Business Book Award follows a blend of popular rating and jury rating. This rating method has helped even debutant authors win this prestigious award competing against stalwarts.
The Learning Trap is an investigative work on how a multi-billion-dollar valuation company fumbled and is now fighting for survival. It is a lesson for companies that focus excessively on the valuation route instead of a profitable route for growth. It is also a big lesson for startup founders on the importance of governance and stakeholder transparency.
This is based on the author’s reporting about Byju’s for The Morning Context. The book was inspired by the author asking a simple question – where was hundreds of millions of investor money going and what where were the learning outcomes? Much before he could stumble on the answers The Morning Context had uncovered the dark underbelly of edtech – how the biggest edtech company could become the biggest write-down in India’s tech startup history. The book is published by Juggernaut.
The 10th edition of BBLF hosted 30 plus authors over eight sessions from all over India at the Catholic Club. Prominent speakers included Harish Bhat, former Brand Custodian at Tata Sons, Nitin Sethi, co-founder of The Reporters’ Collective, Ajai Choudhry, Co-founder of HCL, Prof. Raghuram, former Director of IIM Bangalore, Vipul Arora, ESG expert, Tanuj Bhojwani, co-founder of Ekstep, Ramachandra Guha, noted Historian and Environmentalist.
The Bangalore Business Literature Festival was co-founded in 2015 by Benedict Paramanand, Dr. V Raghunathan, Shinie Antony, Sangeeth Varghese and P. Shankar. The purpose of this festival is to promote business literature among entrepreneurs, executives and graduate students.
