'Yayy, he's back. Let's invest. He will surely make us money' - Blume
WhiteHat Jr., Karan Bajaj's earlier company is a clear example of how EdTech start-ups have often used parents' insecurities to make money.
Some might say there’s nothing wrong with using people’s insecurities. That’s how companies sell things we don’t truly need—like luxury bags, makeup, or extra clothes. The difference is, when I buy a luxury bag, I actually get one. When I use makeup, it works as expected. The insecurity is mine, but the product delivers as promised.
WhiteHat Jr. was different. It was unethical and misled parents who didn't know better.
* It made all sorts of false claims to sell its courses e.g. the child having the potential of Bill Gates and Einstein and only a coding class away from achieving it.
* Created a fictitious 13-year-old boy called Wolf Gupta and passed him off as some computer programming genius who is making a tonne of money working at Google with a package upward of 1 crore
* Guilt tricked parents into believing that they are bad parents simply because they are not investing in computer programming courses for their kids in a competitive dog-eat-dog world
As Ashish at The Morning Context writes: WhiteHat Jr was horseshit packaged in shining wrapping paper, eventually landing on Byju’s head.
This post is not only about Karan Bajaj. This post is about venture capitalists who chose to put money in the new start-up. Who enable people like Karan Bajaj and choose to back a person who conned consumers at scale.
It is also a reminder to consumers to not get tricked again - this time it might not be just some money that goes to waste, it could be a loved one's life.
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