New Delhi: “Jo dikhta hai, woh hota nahi hai”, our elders have used this to help us make the right decisions a not get carried away with limited information. Many people realised how important this is, especially when things got worse when they ignored advice. One person who personifies this is Byju Raveendran.
Currently abroad, Byju’s was once the poster boy of India’s startup space, when the ed-tech company named after him reached a valuation of $22 billion in 2022, making it even bigger than PayTM, the other home grown startup that people loved.
Fast forward today, Byju’s has all but collapsed, with its valuation being zero, as per his own revelation.
Many now club him with other fugitive billionaire defaulters like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.
So, what made a hardworking, respected and ambitious teacher- entrepreneur who grew his company from nothing to fall from grace in less than 3 years? It all comes down to mis-judgements of opportunities and the intense hunger to grow, expand and dominate the market ASAP.
Byju has seen how his parents taught in the local village school he attended. Even after he started working, he helped his friends crack the CAT exam during his spare time. Encouraged by the success, he quit his job and started his own coaching center named Byju’s classes.
He initially operated just like his peers- he operated coaching centers where he helped hundreds of students solve formulas and problems to crack competitive entrance examinations where only less than 5% of the examinees ever make it to prestigious institutions like the IITs and the IIMs.
To his credit, he had the foresight to launch an e-learning app in 2011 just as smartphones started becoming every student’s must-have electronic device.
Within 3 years, the Byju app got more than 2 million downloads. The app was praised for its interactive learning methods, using games and quizzes to make learning fun rather than attending boring lectures every morning.
When COVID struck, e-learning became a lifeline for millions of students who were confined to their homes. It gave Byju a once-in a lifetime opportunity that gave his fledging company exposure to a host of investors looking to leverage on the study from home trend.
He saw so much potential in his business that Think and Learn Pvt Ltd, his holding company, spent $2.8 billion to acquire 12 companies in the education space, between 2017 and 2021.
This was the time when many believed that the work from home/study from home trend will remain indefinite.That’s what encouraged angel investors like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Dutch-based Prosus Group and others to invest in the company.
When children returned to school, coaching centers reopened and daily lives resumed, Byju kept believing(and convincing) people about the potential of his business model.
By the time the whole euphoria about work from home ended, it became clear that Byju’’s business model wouldn’t survive, even though he tried to offer a hybrid-class model with his acquired company Aakash educational services.
By mid-2024, Byju’s investors had lost trust in the current management of the firm, and a series of insolvency cases followed. Reports of unpaid salaries, mounting complaints and cases continued. As a last ditch effort, Byju even resorted to raising debt in his personal capacity to pay off the salaries and other dues. When things got out of hand, he disappeared in the public domain for a while. On the 18th, he held an online press conference from Dubai, where he has promised to repay the debts he owes.
Even though his creditors, employees and investors are hounding him for answers, Byju hasn’t given up. He hasn’t run away like Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi, but is brave enough to face his fears. How he comes out of the deep ditch he has dug remains to be seen.
