Byju’s is the name of a Bangalore-based startup that provides students the opportunity to learn math and science through short videos. The company was launched in 2011 by a former teacher, Byju Raveendran. Today the application has more than 40 million registered users.
A former teacher from India created Byju’s application in 2011 when only a few million people in India owned smartphones. However, thanks to the proliferation of low-cost Android phones in India and falling Internet prices, hundreds of millions of people in the country have embraced online technology over the past decade, and by today the number of Byju’s users is confidently moving to 50 million mark.
Byju’s service was founded in 2011, and its app was released at the end of 2015. In 2016, the company attracted investments from the Mark Zuckerberg Foundation, Sequoia Capital, and other investors. In total, since its founding, the project has raised about $1.4 billion in funds.
Byju’s became popular due to the use of innovative methods to explain complex scientific concepts. The startup offers courses that cater to students from sixth grade to undergraduates, including those preparing for competitive graduate school.
As for the visual identity, the application uses a bright yet calm color palette and simple shapes, which work pretty well in reflecting the essence and purpose of the company and its approach — innovative yet reliable and professional.
The very first logo was created for the startup at the beginning of the 2010s and was based on a purple and white combination of colors, with the logotype as the main hero of the badge. It was a glossy light purple square with rounded angles, where the gradient background features thin white geometric figures and formulas. The muted graphics made the bold white wordmark in two levels look bright and strong. The upper “Byju’s” line was executed in a rounded sans-serif and featured a thin gray shadow, while the bottom “The Learning App” had its typeface more traditional and straight.
The redesign of 2017 kept the purple and white color palette, but changed the concept of the logo, making it more modern and young. Now the badge was separated into two parts — the emblem, placed on the left, and the logotype, following it. The emblem boasted a plain flat square in solid purple, with its angles rounded, and the stylized contoured “B” set on it diagonally. As for the wordmark, it was written in the uppercase of a bold rounded sans-serif typeface, resembling the one from the original version. The tagline can be seen on some of the versions of Byju’s logo, written in the title case of a simple and laconic sans-serif font.
The Byju’s logotype from the version of 2017 is executed in a modern and smooth sans-serif typeface, which is similar to Próxima Nova Rounded, with its bold lines, softened ends of the bars, and stable shapes of the letters. The smooth contours are what make the inscription friendly and welcoming, and the tagline, which is sometimes used in the official logo, adds some strictness and professionalism to the composition.
As for the color palette, the company has chosen purple and white from its very first days. Purple is the color of wisdom and mystery, knowledge and creativity, and in collaboration with white, a symbol of loyalty and transparency, it works brilliantly on reflecting the main idea and values of the startup.