By Aditya Kalra
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Byju Raveendran, an Indian mathematics whiz who soared from teacher to startup billionaire before his education-technology company imploded this year, now faces his biggest test.
The future of Raveendran’s eponymous Byju’s online coaching firm rests with India’s courts after the country’s biggest startup, once loved by global investors who valued it at $22 billion, crashed below $2 billion in valuation. The 44-year-old founder last week lost control of the company as a tribunal kick-started an insolvency process.
Accused of “financial mismanagement and compliance issues”, the son of a family of teachers from a small village in south India faces a reckoning that will test the ingenuity that made him a poster child for India’s startups.
His formerly high-flying company was eventually brought low when it could not pay $19 million in sponsorship dues to India’s cricket federation, prompting a tribunal to suspend Byju’s board and make Raveendran report to a court-appointed restructuring expert.
An appeals tribunal is expected to hold a hearing on Monday on whether Byju’s insolvency process should be quashed after the former billionaire argued in court his company is solvent and that insolvency could shut it down and cost the jobs of 27,000 staff, including teachers. Insolvency also would not bode well for Byju’s backers, such as Dutch technology investor Prosus.
Raveendran denies the allegations of mismanagement and wrongdoing at his firm, which has in recent months faced lawsuits over unpaid loans and boardroom battles with foreign investors that went public.
Potential insolvency is a dramatic turn of events for an entrepreneur described by one person who has worked with him as an extremely passionate and goal-oriented person who might adopt “an abrasive approach” in a crisis.
Raveendran presented a “suave, nice and polished” image, appearing to heed advice, but “eventually there was a trust deficit”, said another executive who quit last year as a Byju’s senior vice president.
“He said things are improving, don’t worry, we have the money,” the former executive said.
Raveendran and a Byju’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
BYJU’S DOWNFALL: ‘OUR FAIR SHARE OF MISTAKES’
An engineer by training, he started Byju’s in 2011 with physical classes after friends urged him to go into teaching.
Raveendran, who aced a premier Indian management exam “with a score of 100 percentile, not once but twice”, according to the company website, started what would become his empire with his wife Divya Gokulnath, 38, a former student of his.
