The ed-tech startup, Byju's moved to a ‘freemium’ model in March, providing free access to its courses for students after the closure of schools and institutions in India. As students and learners stay home and engage more in online courses, Byju's has seen a spike in demand for its platform. In March alone, the platform added six million new students on the platform and another 7.5 million students in April, where most of them were organic users.

To match up this increasing demand of online courses, the ed-tech startup will add 4,000 more to its workforce in the next six months. 

“We actually started hiring across different business functions since April itself. Because of the uptick in organic demand, we required a bigger sales and after-sales team to engage with parents and students," said Mohit, COO, Byju's.

In addition to the current pandemic, it is the freepremium model that has worked in favor for Byju's. Mohit shared that it also resulted in lower marketing and promotional spending in the last few months. 

Not only Byju's but other ed-tech startup have amid the pandemic witnessed more traction than ever before. The KalaGato report also showed that other education startups such as Toppr, saw a 47 percent increase in DAUs between February and April. Similarly, online up-skilling platform Coursera and non-profit education portal Khan Academy saw a 28 percent and 33 percent m-o-m increase in DAUs, respectively.