Byju’s Founder Byju Raveendran Sentenced To Six Months For Contempt By Singapore Court | N18V

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[00:00:03][music] >> From being India's most celebrated and valued EdTech company at one point to now facing a bankruptcy trial, this is the story of Byju's, [music] its meteoric rise and shocking downfall. But before we get into how all of that drama unfolded, [music] let's go back in time to tell you how this all began.

[00:00:26]>> [music] >> Byju Raveendran came from very humble beginnings. He was born in a small village in Kerala to parents who were teachers themselves.

[00:00:34]>> [music] >> An avid footballer and cricketer in school, Raveendran was a self-learner from a very young age and he used to develop different learning methods to understand concepts [music] better. Did you know how he taught himself English, by the way? Listen to this. I come from a small village.

[00:00:50]Uh went to a Malayalam medium school.

[00:00:53]Didn't have much of an influence on me as such. Used to spend most of my time outside classrooms playing multiple games. So that kind of forced me to become a self-learner. So being a self-learner throughout, math and science I've learned on my own. The average English which I speak here is something which and maybe I speak fast because I've learned that by listening to sports commentaries on radios.

[00:01:10]Interesting. So So very contextually, so as to enjoy those games, I used to enjoy learning, a combination of which obviously the logic which I learned from my math and the positive attitude which I've learned from those multiple games is helping me immensely in running the business the way we do it today. From tutoring a handful of friends in a small Bengaluru apartment to conducting math workshops for more than 20,000 students in stadiums, believe you, by 2014 to launching his flagship learning app [music] in 2015, notching up 150 million learners >> [music] >> by 2022, Byju's had a decade-long dream run which is fast turning into a bruising nightmare. But we'll get to that in just a bit. Now, in 2007, 27-year-old Ravindran was working as an engineer for a UK-based company, which is called Pan Ocean Shipping. Now, a bunch of his friends [music] were working in Bangalore's IT industry and preparing for CAT exams. They chose to pick Ravindran's brain because by then, he had a knack for knowing the hacks and the shortcuts which were needed to crack exams. By [music] the way, he also wrote the exam himself just to accompany his friends and ended up scoring a 100 percentile. Well, he didn't really end up [music] joining any B schools, though. But, you know, this is when Ravindran first savored respect that he could get as an educator, and he decided to start holding classes over [music] weekends. And that, my friends, is how Byju's Classes was born. I always used to teach first my neighbors when I was in school, then um my classmates. Then, once I was I was started working abroad as an engineer, uh worked there for 3 years. During an extended break, my friends came to me for help.

[00:02:56]>> Mhm.

[00:02:56]First formal session was for just 35 of my friends. Ah. But, the sixth one was for 1,200. So, from 35 to 1,200, it just happened by word of mouth.

[00:03:05]So, thinking because always part of the game, this got scaled up from 1,200 students in Bangalore to then later stadiums all over India. Ravindran trained more teachers, and many of his students took [music] up senior management roles as the company continued to grow. But, there was one student among them that caught Ravindran's eye. 21-year-old Divya Gokulnath had just graduated [music] from RV College of Engineering and enrolled into Byju's Classes for her GRE preparation. Now, Ravindran later recalled that he had noticed her because she would ask a lot of questions even [music] during breaks. When he later suggested that she join as a Byju's teacher herself, Gokulnath gave up on her US dream and [music] decided to stay back. The two, of course, later tied the knot 2009 >> [music] >> and two years after that, she was designated as the company's co-founder.

[00:03:58]By 2011, the company was officially registered as Think and Learn Private Limited and foray into the kindergarten to class 12 education segment. Two years later, Byju's backed its very first big investor. The story goes that Ravindran caught the attention of Manipal Global's Dr. Ranjan Pai and along with chairman Mohandas Pai, he bought a 26% stake in Think and Learn back in 2014. [music] And that, my friends, was the very first check that Byju's got. We heard of him first when in Manipal we found a rush of young people going to a class. And when we inquired as to why they're doing that, we found that there was a a person by the name of Byju Ravindran who was taking classes for them to enable them to pass their classes in the IIM and they were very very happy with him and the success rate is extraordinarily high. So, when we contacted him and requested for a meeting, he came and he spoke to us and he explained and we found that he was a wonderful entrepreneur who has hit upon a successful idea and who has made sure that the idea actually works. He has tested this out. He has led from the front, done many things himself. He is open to change. He has changed the way of doing things based upon responses.

[00:05:08]And overall, we felt here is a wonderful person whom we had to back. He's got a great business idea and this idea is truly transformational. And that's the reason why we thought we should invest in him. Now, by this time, they had established their [music] offline presence and gone online as well. But Byju's big breakthrough came in 2015 because [music] that's when they launched their flagship learning app and for the very first time, students could stream their tuition classes on their phones or on [music] their tablets. And that was a big brand pivot for the company and for EdTech [music] in India.

[00:05:41]Do you know that in just 90 days, 20 lakh students [music] had downloaded the app? That is the kind of popularity that it had. And that helped the company raise a massive $75 million in a Series C funding round in 2016.

[00:05:56]Now, in the same year, in a Series D round, >> [music] >> Byju's picked up another very interesting investor, $50 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. So, from 2015 to 2021, Byju's had this dream run.

[00:06:10]This is also the time when the [music] company added more and more investors who poured millions of dollars into the company. Byju's then became India's first edtech unicorn, that is a company with a billion-dollar valuation, and its valuation continued to shoot through the roof. When the pandemic hit, Byju's was already a decacorn, that is valued at $10 billion.

[00:06:34]Less than 2 years later, Byju's valuation had touched a staggering $22 billion.

[00:06:40]>> [music] >> These are all just names, unicorns, uh probably the largest edtech company in the world. They don't mean much other than like nice headline on a newspaper or on TV, but the fact is it's just relative success. As I mentioned, [music] uh if you just look at the number of students who are continuously learning from us, that's less than 1%ish of the students [music] in India, right? So, there is a long way to go before we call it a revolution. Now, uh but one good thing about the segment is that creating uh if the the real fun is not in creating a billion-dollar company. It's it's in changing the way millions think and learn. Now, even if Raveendran himself did not care for this tag, investors surely did. Amid the spread of COVID and education moving online, both the company and its investors were gung ho about the company's global growth potential. While the going was good, Byju's channeled millions of dollars into its marketing campaign. Do you remember these two guys?

[00:07:38]Well, Byju's was also the main sponsor of the Indian cricket team and an official sponsor of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. But Byju's mostly used all of this money to fund a buying spree across India, Asia, and the United States. Some of these, specifically WhiteHat Jr., turned out to be a bad bet for the company. But Byju's at that time was riding on this wave and expanding [music] furiously at the time. And Byju's didn't really stop at just raising equity to fuel this expansion.

[00:08:09]Now, they decided to go to the debt route as well. By November of 2021, they got themselves a $1.2 billion term loan.

[00:08:17]And Byju's just had to pay a very small interest rate of 5 and 1/2% plus LIBOR.

[00:08:23]And back then, LIBOR was just 0.2%. So, basically, they got this loan pretty cheap. But as we find out later, it turned out to be a very costly affair for them. The sheer pace of growth that also started to take its toll. And the cracks started to then show. Byju's did not even have a CFO from December '21 to April '23, although it claimed it had vice presidents of finance for its various divisions. The company was dogged by complaints as parents accused it of not fulfilling its promises, coercing them into buying courses that they couldn't really afford, and then not even providing the promised services. Employees also reportedly complained of this [music] high-pressure sales culture, unrealistic targets that company had set. But Byju Raveendran termed this [music] as aggressive selling. There's only a thin line between what you think mis-selling and aggressive selling. Uh in in while growing fast, as I've accepted multiple times, we have made our share our share of mistakes. When we grew from 300 sales guys to almost like thousands of sales guys. And uh but it's it's always been uh we've been trying to improve on that. We have significantly improved on how we actually control mis-selling. And over the last with the with our like version 2.0 which we launched a couple of months back where we've completely digitized the process. It's it's almost impossible to do misselling today. Though these one-off incidents which will still [music] which has been coming out is considering the fact that we have millions of subscribers and in today's world even low single digit percentage of detractors voice gets amplified. But there is no scope for short-term optics. The intent has always been there to improve on this process.

[00:10:09]Do we regret scaling this fast? No, we were actually creating a segment which is such an important thing because at the end of the day today even a student who is in a small town in India they get access to the same content and programs which [music] someone in Bombay and Delhi is getting and the impact which we are creating on those students by introducing these formats of learning will have a positive impact forever. So I don't regret the scaling this fast but because first five years that like a new segment it's it's required. We've made mistakes but there was all like there's always an intent to correct it.

[00:10:45]It's because at the end of the day we are we are not building this to get an exit and make a lot of money. That I never started this as a business. It ended up becoming one. We are still in that pursuit of how to make it better and better for students. Now unfortunately most of the happy students I I always tell that love is private and hate is public. And then we've been on the receiving end.

[00:11:05]It's quite understandable why he said hate was public at the time because [music] that is when the layoff started to begin. Then with the pandemic in the rearview mirror students started going back to physical classes and the demand for EdTech solutions in India didn't really materialize as expected. [music] So the company had to resort to cutting cost. Now through all of this Raveendran put up a very brave front writing in a letter [music] to his employees that 2022 is going to be a defining year for them [music] and that Byju's comeback will be stronger than the setback. Well, not much time passed before employees received another letter. This time the letter announced 2,500 [music] job cuts. Now, in one of these letters he even claimed that Byju's FY22 [music] revenues are going to be 10,000 crore rupees, that is 1.3 billion dollars.

[00:11:58]Well, we now know that that was far from reality. We had six good years, great years from 2015 to 2021. 2022 was a challenging year uh because of multiple reasons.

[00:12:11]Uh apart from [music] the the big macro challenge.

[00:12:14]So, first 6 years we have focused on like we have prioritized growth over uh and we were very close to profitability in in 2020 itself.

[00:12:25]And in the last 2 years [music] with pandemic accelerating the online learning uh we uh accelerated our growth both organically and inorganically and that came with a lot of complexity because we made multiple acquisitions both in India as well as in international markets.

[00:12:42][music] Did you bite off more than you could chew? I I don't think so. It's uh like yeah, when you like there are like if you take a look at our acquisition scorecard uh we have made five big acquisitions. Four of them are doing very well. Though people talk about the one where we are struggling, the fact that Akash is 3x in just 2 years, Great Learning is almost 2 and 1/2 x in 2 years, uh and all our US acquisitions are doing well. We have we have struggled with one acquisition in terms of like though there is a strong product market fit, we have not been able to figure out the go-to-market strategy in WhiteHat Jr.

[00:13:13]and that's what obviously got amplified in the media. So, overall uh uh though as challenging as it has been [music] like it's it's been for all the startups, especially at tech startups with and in some segments seeing COVID pullback, but India we see continued [music] momentum and we're very, very bullish on the mid-to-long term. So, when its financial results for FY21 were finally published after a very long delay, >> [music] >> Byju's, by the way, reported a loss of 4,500 crore rupees, which was a staggering increase [music] over the previous year. And that 10,000 crore revenue that he talked about, well, for FY22, that turned out to barely be a third of the number. As if these troubles weren't enough, in April 2023, Byju's office in Bengaluru was raided by the Indian authorities over suspected violations of foreign exchange laws, and the ED issued a show cause notice to Think and Learn along with its CEO, Byju Raveendran, >> [music] >> alleging violation of FEMA norms involving an outrageous amount.

[00:14:13]>> [music] >> Byju's, of course, denied any wrongdoing.

[00:14:16]Now, by this time, its lenders were also starting to lose patience. [music] They filed a suit in the US court accusing it of defaulting on payments and breaching norms of the loan agreement. They even accused the company of diverting funds through its US-based subsidiary, which is called Alpha, a claim, of course, which Byju's again denied. Now, the edtech first [music] attempted to soothe the lenders, and when that didn't work, they started engaging in settlement talks, [music] and we still have to see how that pans out. But, even this was not the end of its predicaments. Its auditors quit citing delays in Byju's submitting its financial statements, [music] and soon after, there was news that three of its board members [music] had resigned, leaving just three people on the board. No points for guessing, it was CEO Byju Raveendran, his wife Divya Gokulnath, and his brother Riju Raveendran.

[00:15:08]The company was lurching from one crisis to another at this point. [music] This also reflected in its valuation, and the markdowns came thick and fast.

[00:15:17]From $22 billion in March 2022 to half the valuation within a year. In November 2023 came the big [music] cut. Prosus wrote down the value of its stake in Think and Learn for the third time in 14 months, pegging its valuation at $3 billion.

[00:15:35]In January 2024, BlackRock handed the sharpest cut, slashing Byju's valuation down to $1 billion.

[00:15:45]>> [snorts] >> And there is still no end to Byju's [music] troubles. You see, in 2017 when smartphone giant Oppo backed out from its deal with the BCCI, Byju's stepped in, placing its logo on the Indian cricket team's jersey. [music] Now, remember this was the time of Byju's great run when its fortunes were soaring, but post the pandemic era brought harsh realities, leading Byju's to undertake severe cost-cutting [music] measures. To calm the waters, they decided to pull out of the BCCI sponsorship in December of 2022.

[00:16:17]But the move triggered a legal showdown because BCCI claimed unpaid dues and escalated the matter to the National Company Law Tribunal. Now, while NCLT is a bankruptcy court, it doesn't necessarily mean that Byju's is bankrupt, but it does smell financial trouble, and I'll leave you to mull over all of this. So, will Byju's script a comeback or will its troubles worsen?

[00:16:42]For now, the odds are stacked high against what was once India's most celebrated unicorn.

[00:16:54]For more news and [music] updates, all you need to do is follow CNBC-TV18 on all of our digital platforms.