The Curious Case of Byju Raveendran’s

From the CEO and founder of a $22 billion edtech startup to 6 months in Singapore Jail. It is not a fictional story or a joke, but the insane rise and absolute fall of the small teacher from Kerala named Byju Raveendran. The guy who transformed how math is taught and how India learns, and who once built India’s most valuable startup, is preparing to go to jail.

Way before everything started, our story’s antagonist, Raveendran, was known as a gifted teacher. Born to a school teacher in Azhikode, Kerala, he was unusually sharp. While working as an Engineer at the shipping company, he began helping his friends with CAT preparation. He was so good that word spread like wildfire, and his sessions started to fill with a large number of students, even filling auditoriums.

He launched BYJU’s, an edtech company, in 2011, when the whole of India, and even the world, was still obsessed with learning through traditional teaching methods. The company initially gained popularity through its learning app, riding the wave of growing smartphone adoption and low-cost internet access. But the real growth came when the pandemic hit, and everything went behind closed doors; everyone suddenly felt the need for Online Education. Users increased rapidly, and so did the funding rounds. Every Investor wanted a piece of Byju’s. Investors like Mark Zuckerberg, Qatar Investment Authority, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tencent, Sequoia Capital, and BlackRock invested over $4.6 billion across 20+ funding rounds.

But this hyper growth came at a cost. Byju’s poured all this money into buying startups across categories, including $120 million for Osmo, $300 million for WhiteHat Jr, $500 million for Epic, $600 million for Great Learning, and others, at very high valuations. They also sponsored the Indian cricket team, Kerala Blasters from ISL, and the Qatar Football World Cup 2022.

The company faced severe criticism for its aggressive sales strategy, operational issues, governance lapses, debt-payment issues, and the underperformance of startups it acquired. The company faced severe delays in filing audited financial statements, a public default on a ₹159 crore payment to the BCCI, and intense allegations from lenders about unmapped offshore fund transfers from its US subsidiary.

Currently, the Singapore court has granted temporary relief by staying its earlier decision to sentence him to 6 months’ jail and in a contempt case linked to non-compliance with the court order regarding disclosure of assets and ownership records. It is part of a larger legal battle involving overseas investors and lenders trying to recover their investments. What happens next is the question no one can answer.