Byju Raveendran: Education mission ruined by the greed of some American vulture lenders, taking a loan of ₹ 100 crore was a big mistake

Byju Raveendran, founder of India's former darling edtech company Byju's, spoke publicly for the first time about his company's rise to success, only to collapse as quickly. It was, in his words, a lost opportunity for India. He envisioned a million jobs in teachers, but his mission was thwarted by greed from certain vulture lenders in America.

Ravindra said in a meeting with a news agency, two years ago we were sitting on thousands of crores of rupees. Today we have nothing. Having done that, we have raised a few hundred crores more because many good people have backed us in the last two years. Some American and some Indian have targeted us. These are all hedge funds. Once valued at $22 billion, Byju's has faced financial, regulatory, and legal problems. This has led to Raveendran Byju currently residing in Dubai. He admitted strategic missteps and the company's choice to take a term loan of Rs 100 crore despite strong equity options ultimately exposed the company to aggressive external pressures.

Raveendran said, I am not giving up. As soon as we come back in control and the control is 100 per cent with me, we will rebuild. Byju 3.0 is our mission. I am not in a position to tell what that will be. I can assure you that it will be rebuilt on the same mission, which is to instill a love of learning in students. Byju's co-founder and Byju Raveendran's wife Divya Gokulnath said, we don't go out. We don't party. We don't network. It's all a lie. We don't have a luxury car or house. When things got bad, the people who mattered stayed with us. Our circle didn't change. Even when we reached such heights, it kept us grounded.

Byju said, I am not blaming all my investors. I am a person who tries to take every possible loss, but there are some rotten people too. It is just three or four investors who, along with some lenders, have tried to take control of the company.

Ravindra said, when we tried to expand from India to the whole world, we made some business mistakes. Maybe we could have slowed it down a little bit. We were growing too quickly, too fast. We went into 21 new countries from India. But if you ask me, in terms of 2019 to 2021, in the Covid era, we have 160 world-class investors and equity investors. Due to external shocks like the Russia-Ukraine war, promises by investors went wrong, this affected the plans.