Abstract

Byju Raveendran founded Byju’s in 2011 and launched a learning app in 2015 that promised personalized, interactive and adaptive learning benefits for school students. The Byju’s app found many takers. Even venture capitalists got interested in Byju’s and India’s ed-tech growth story and poured millions of dollars into the company. The pandemic impacted the world of education in a big way. Learning online was the new normal and Byju’s was among the harbingers of this change. Buoyed by the growing demand for its courses, Byju’s attracted more venture funding. Flushed with funds it went on an acquisition spree to expand its offerings into different domains and its business into foreign countries. Its valuation continued to increase, reaching US$ 22 billion in 2022. After the end of the pandemic, online teaching and learning took a backseat. This started impacting Byju’s as students stopped renewing their subscriptions. The investors were unhappy with Byju’s delaying the announcement of financial results year after year and started demanding higher interest and prepayment of loans. The auditor, Deloitte, severed its ties with Byju's, citing its inability to conduct an audit. Three directors representing the leading investors in the company resigned from the board. Raveendran needed to address the challenges and steer the company ahead.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Identify the Internal causes that can push companies into crises
• Determine the conditions encountered by founders when their company is not on the right track

Keywords

Edutech; startup; Byju’s; entrepreneurship; internal causes; entrepreneurial challenges; funding; perils of rapid growth; freemium model; financial results; turnaround; Organizational Distress