BYJU's among world's top 10 education apps downloaded during the lockdown

The coronavirus crisis may have plunged the world into a deep recession, but it has also served as an inflection point for online education.

With nearly 1.5 billion students around the world compelled to stay home, the growth of learning apps is one of the most prominent narratives emerging out of the pandemic.

Homegrown edtech unicorn BYJU'S is the only Indian entry in the list of April's top 10 downloaded education apps on Google Play Store, according to data from Sensor Tower. BYJU's occupies the 10th spot on a list topped by Google Classroom and YouTube Kids.

Incidentally, BYJU's clocked revenues of Rs 350 crore in April, in what was "its best month" of all time, Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran shared on YourStory's flagship series Money Matters. "We just finished our best month in April despite being free. We’re expecting to double that [revenue] in the next three to four months,” he said.

As soon as the lockdown was announced in March, BYJU's made all its content free.

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The billionaire-founder also told YourStory that the learning platform recorded 7.5 million new users since it opened up content access to all users.

BYJU's also introduced ‘Live Classes’ on its app after the lockdown. The feature is aimed to replicate a classroom-like environment online. “It allows students to attend scheduled classes periodically and is meant to replicate the regularity of school,” Byju explained. 

The app counts over 50 million downloads on Play Store, and is rated 4.5 out of 5.

Other top learning apps

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Leading the charge of education apps globally are Google Classroom and YouTube Kids, which notched up 28.2 million and 10.6 million downloads respectively in April.

Google Classroom was the biggest gainer, witnessing a 21X increase in downloads from April 2019. YouTube Kids, on the other hand, grew nearly 3X from a year ago.

Interestingly, India was the top market for YouTube Kids, accounting for 16.8 percent of total downloads across app stores. For Google Classroom, it ranked second behind the US, contributing 13 percent of app downloads globally, Sensor Tower revealed.

Other education apps in the top ten included Duolingo, Photomath, Simply Piano, Toka Hair Salon 4, Cake, U-Dictionary, PictureThis, and Edmodo.