Dubai:
Bayju Ravendran, the founder of Edtech giant veteran Bayju, admitted that the company made “some commercial mistakes” when “extended very fast” in 21 countries due to the ‘mandate’ from world class investors.
“When we tried to expand from India to the whole world, we made some commercial mistakes. Maybe we could take it a little slowly. We were growing very soon, we were growing very fast. We moved to 21 new countries from India. But if you ask me, in that context of 2019 to 2021, we have 160 investors, investors of the world class, and equivalent, and equivalent, and equivalent, and equivalent.
In 2022, the founder of the most valuable Edtech, once the most valuable Edtech founder in the country, also admitted that due to “external macro reasons” such as the Russia-Ukraine War, the major investments promised by investors dried up, influenced expansion and acquisition plans.
He said, “We were raising money for development at the time. But when the world changed when the interest rates increased, when the Fed increased the interest rate and almost together, the major war started, Russia and Ukraine, suddenly dried up. Sudden liquidity dried up. 700 million committed capital; Signed in the signed capital, not signed up in the signed capital,” he said.
He said that the Edtech company was planning its acquisition plans and development at that time, assuming that they would get the promised funds. Mr. Raywayndran further admitted that Edtec has now been struggling for liquidity for almost three years.
“So we were planning all these acquisitions and development, assuming that all this money is coming. In fact, these documents were signed. There was no litigation. We did not go and did not litigate the investors who returned due to these external macro reasons. He said the money.”
Launched in 2015, Edtech completed students from Kindergarten to class 12. The company achieved the status of ‘unicorn’, by 2019, the value of more than 1 billion USD and then in 2022 touched the USD 22 billion valuation mark.
In June 2024, the process, a firm that invests in technology-based companies, reduced Bayju’s evaluation by 75 percent.
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