WhiteHat Jr: The founder of India’s most controversial ed-tech startup on what went wrong
An interview with CEO Karan Bajaj.
Karan Bajaj, the CEO of WhiteHat Jr.
Two-year-old coding-for-kids startup WhiteHat Jr became all the rage in India last year when it launched a multimillion-dollar advertising blitzkrieg, flooding television screens and digital media. It was hard to miss the commercials, some of which claimed the company’s students – some as young as six – were being chased by global investors and bagging jobs at Google because of the skills they had acquired through WhiteHat Jr classes.
The campaign was a big success: WhiteHat Jr said its revenue run rate – extrapolating an annual revenue figure based on one month’s actual revenue – ballooned from just $75 million in June to $220 million in August. That same month, the company solidified its status as a startup success story when it was acquired by India’s largest ed-tech unicorn, Byju’s, for $300 million in cash.