Byju's Was Valued At $22 Billion In 2022. It Is Currently In Insolvency Proceedings. It Sponsored The FIFA World Cup In Between. None Of This Makes More Sense In Order.

BENGALURU — Let us begin with what is true and important and often forgotten in the roasting: Byju Raveendran was a genuinely remarkable teacher. He grew up in a Kerala village where both his parents were teachers. He started teaching friends for CAT preparation as a favour and discovered that his methods worked extraordinarily well — he scored 100 percentile twice, took the CAT twice just to prove it wasn't luck, and built a small empire of students who passed exams they might not have passed without him. The Byju's Learning App, when it launched in 2015, was genuinely good. Students liked it. Parents bought subscriptions. Teachers said the videos were excellent. The product worked. This is the tragedy of Byju's — it was a real thing that became an unreal thing, and the unreal thing destroyed the real thing, and now the insolvency proceedings are working through the wreckage of both.

The timeline of destruction is instructive. In 2018, Byju's became a unicorn at $1 billion valuation — deserved, arguably. In 2020, pandemic hits, online education explodes, Byju's raises money at a speed that should have triggered alarm bells but instead triggered congratulations. In 2021, valuation hits $18 billion. Byju's buys WhiteHat Jr for $300 million — a company that ran ads featuring children saying "I coded an app and now I'm a millionaire" that were challenged as misleading. In 2022, Byju's buys Aakash Educational Services for $950 million. Byju's buys Epic (US digital reading platform) for $500 million. Byju's signs Lionel Messi as brand ambassador. Byju's sponsors the ICC T20 World Cup jersey. Byju's reaches $22 billion valuation. Byju's spends money at a rate that its revenue cannot match and its audit cannot track. Deloitte, its auditor, resigns in June 2023, citing inability to complete the audit. When your auditor resigns, the auditor is trying to tell you something. The auditor is not using subtle language. The language is: I cannot audit this. Please do not attach my name to this. I am leaving.

The WhiteHat Jr acquisition deserves its own moment of silence. WhiteHat Jr taught children to code. Its ads featured children aged 6 to 14 claiming to have built apps that were earning money. One ad featured a child claiming to earn ₹1.2 lakh per month from an app he built at age 9. ASCI found multiple ads misleading. Byju's paid $300 million for this company. Three hundred million US dollars. For a company whose primary asset was misleading advertisements about children's coding abilities. This is not a misprint. The number is $300 million. Byju's paid this. In 2020. At a valuation of $18 billion. With money raised from investors including Mark Zuckerberg's foundation, the Government of Singapore, Tiger Global, and Sequoia India. All of them said yes to this. All of them have since said other things. The ₹300 million is gone. The app is gone. The children did not earn ₹1.2 lakh per month. They were children. They were in school. This is where children are supposed to be.

In October 2024, Byju's entered insolvency proceedings. Its valuation, once $22 billion, is currently estimated at ₹840 crore — a decline of approximately 95%. The $5.8 billion raised from investors is largely spent. The Messi sponsorship produced photographs. The FIFA jersey produced photographs. The 50,000 employees at peak produced an alumni network that is now one of the most active job-seeking communities in Indian tech. Byju Raveendran, who was a real teacher with a real gift who genuinely helped real students pass real exams, lost control of a company that grew faster than any human being can govern, surrounded himself with people who told him what he wanted to hear, and spent money on acquisitions and marketing at a rate that would have required revenue growth the business was not capable of producing. He was not a fraud. He was a teacher who became a CEO without ever becoming a CFO, and the difference between those two jobs destroyed $22 billion. The students, in retrospect, could have just read the textbook.