Byju's went from $22bn to near zero — over-expansion, debt and collapse

Byju's was founded in 2011 as an online test-prep platform by Byju Raveendran, a former teacher. It grew rapidly through aggressive marketing, a freemium app model, and a relentless sales force. By 2022 it was India's most valuable startup at $22 billion, with 7.5 million paid customers and nearly 50,000 employees. The pandemic had supercharged demand for online learning.

But Byju's spent the boom years on a buying spree: over $2 billion in acquisitions in 2021 alone, buying Aakash Educational Services ($700m), Epic ($500m), Great Learning, Gradeup, Tynker, and others. The acquisitions were not integrated well. The company's losses ballooned to 45.64 billion rupees ($550m) in FY2021, up from $19m the year before. Revenue fell 3% as students returned to classrooms. Byju's also faced a firestorm over aggressive sales tactics — parents reported being pressured into loans they could not afford, with thousands of complaints on consumer forums.

By 2023 the crisis deepened. Byju's missed a $40m interest payment. Auditors resigned. Board members left. The company laid off thousands of employees, including roughly 1,000 in June 2023 alone. In January 2024, lenders began bankruptcy proceedings against Byju's in the US, and the BCCI filed an insolvency petition in India over unpaid sponsorship dues. The founder injected personal funds to keep the company afloat, but the valuation had collapsed from $22bn to near zero in the eyes of investors.