Byju Raveendran — a teacher from a Kerala village who became a billionaire — built the world's most valuable edtech company. Then, in the span of two years, it collapsed into insolvency, unpaid salaries, regulatory investigations, and legal battles across two continents. The largest startup failure in Indian history is also one of the most instructive.
Think & Learn Private Limited (BYJU'S)
Education Technology · Online Learning · Test Prep
2011 · Bengaluru · by Byju Raveendran & Divya Gokulnath
$22 Billion in 2022 — the world's most valuable edtech company
Under NCLT insolvency proceedings since July 2024 · Valuation: Zero
$5.8B+ from Sequoia, Blackrock, Tiger Global, Prosus, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
150M registered students · 3M annual paid subscribers · 85% retention rate
Aakash Educational Services ($950M), WhiteHat Jr ($300M), Epic (US), Great Learning ($600M)
BYJU'S is not just a failure story. At its peak, it was a genuine innovation — making learning engaging through video and gamification for millions of Indian students. Understanding why it collapsed — governance failures, acquisition overreach, fraudulent fund movements, and investor-founder breakdown — is essential education for every founder, investor, and regulator in India's startup ecosystem.
At its peak, BYJU'S was not just a company — it was a cultural phenomenon. The BYJU'S app, launched in 2015, made learning feel like watching a compelling YouTube video. Animated explanations of complex topics, gamified progress systems, personalised learning paths — for millions of Indian students preparing for IIT-JEE, NEET, and competitive exams, it was transformative.
The core product was genuinely good. Byju Raveendran — himself a phenomenal teacher who famously taught CAT preparation classes to thousands of students simultaneously in stadium-sized venues — understood how to make learning engaging. The app extended that quality of teaching to a phone screen. Students could learn calculus, chemistry, and history through carefully crafted 12–20 minute animated videos, at their own pace, from any location.
By 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented tailwind. Schools shut globally. Parents desperately sought online learning solutions. BYJU'S user numbers exploded from 40 million to 100 million. The company raised $1 billion in a single week in April 2021. It seemed unstoppable. The fall, when it came, was not gradual. It was catastrophic.
Byju Raveendran grew up in Azhikode, a small village in Kerala, in a family of teachers. His father was a physics teacher; his mother taught mathematics. Education was not just a profession in his household — it was an identity. He studied engineering, worked briefly in a shipping company, and then discovered almost by accident that he was extraordinarily gifted at teaching.
In 2003, a friend asked him to help with CAT (Common Admission Test) preparation. Byju scored 100 percentile. He started informally coaching friends. Word spread. Within years, he was conducting classes for thousands of students in Bengaluru's largest auditoriums — sometimes teaching simultaneously to 20,000 students across multiple cities via video link. His classes were theatre as much as education: high energy, deeply visual, packed with analogies that made abstract concepts tangible.
"I am a teacher first. Always have been. The company is just a way to teach more students."
— Byju Raveendran, in an early interview, before the collapseIn 2011, he and his wife Divya Gokulnath formalised the teaching into Think & Learn Private Limited. The BYJU'S app launched in 2015. By 2016, it was the most downloaded education app in India. By 2018, it raised $540 million from Tencent and General Atlantic. By 2022, it was worth $22 billion and Byju Raveendran was a billionaire. And then the structural cracks — some building for years, some accelerated by the post-pandemic correction — began to show all at once.
The problem BYJU'S solved was real: Indian education had excellent teachers and ambitious students, but the delivery mechanism — chalk-and-board classroom instruction — was deeply unscalable. One extraordinary teacher could only teach a hundred students at a time. BYJU'S put that teacher on video, made the content interactive, and scaled the reach to millions.
Between 2020 and 2022, BYJU'S spent approximately $3 billion on acquisitions: Aakash Educational Services ($950M), WhiteHat Jr ($300M), Great Learning ($600M), Epic (US children's reading app, $500M), Toppr, Scholr, TutorVista, and dozens more. The pace was frenetic, the integration was non-existent, and the synergies never materialised. WhiteHat Jr — acquired for $300M — was shut down. Epic became a liability. Aakash, the one acquisition with genuine strategic logic, was operational but burdened by the parent company's collapse.
In November 2021, BYJU's Alpha Inc — a US-incorporated subsidiary — raised $1.2 billion in term loans from a consortium of lenders including Glas Trust. The funds were meant to finance acquisitions and working capital. Instead, according to court filings, $533 million was transferred to Camshaft Capital — a Miami-based hedge fund with almost no public profile. US bankruptcy courts found Raveendran liable for over $1.07 billion. He was ordered to pay by default judgment after failing to appear for hearings.
"The monies from the Alpha loans were not used by Byju Raveendran or any founder for personal gain. They were used for the benefit of Think & Learn Private Limited."
— Byju Raveendran's statement challenging the US court's default judgmentBYJU'S governance structure was, in retrospect, dangerously concentrated. Raveendran controlled majority voting rights. When investors tried to call an Extraordinary General Meeting in February 2024 to remove him, he moved the Karnataka High Court arguing the EGM was invalid. Three major investors — Prosus, Peak XV, and Sofina — resigned from the board. Deloitte resigned as auditor. Financial statements were years overdue. The company that claimed to serve millions of children's futures was ungovernable.
In 2019, BYJU'S had signed a ₹158.9 Cr sponsorship deal with the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) to be the official sponsor of the Indian cricket team's jerseys. By 2023, BYJU'S hadn't paid. BCCI filed an insolvency petition at NCLT Bengaluru. In July 2024, NCLT admitted the petition — triggering India's first major startup insolvency proceeding. A company that had once sponsored India's most prestigious sporting institution couldn't pay a ₹158 Cr bill.
BYJU'S failure was not a product failure — the learning app genuinely worked. It was a governance failure. When founders control voting rights without accountability, when boards cannot function, when auditors cannot get financial statements — the company's legal and financial structure becomes a ticking clock.
BYJU'S spent $3 billion on acquisitions and generated almost no synergy from them. Every acquisition added complexity, cost, and cultural friction without contributing proportionally to revenue. The rule is simple: if you can't integrate, don't acquire. And you cannot integrate at the pace BYJU'S was moving.
BYJU'S peak valuation of $22 billion was built on 2020-2021 user numbers that were inherently temporary. When schools reopened, demand collapsed. Any startup whose growth depends on an emergency condition must model aggressively for normalisation — and BYJU'S did not.
BYJU'S submitted financial statements years late. When you cannot tell investors what happened to their money, they stop trusting you. When auditors cannot verify accounts, they resign. When trust evaporates, valuation evaporates. There is no shortcut around clean, timely financial reporting.
As of early 2026, BYJU'S insolvency proceedings at NCLT Bengaluru continue. The US Delaware bankruptcy court has issued a default judgment against Raveendran for $1.07 billion. The Supreme Court of India has weighed in on settlement disputes. Multiple creditors — Glas Trust ($1.5B claim), Aditya Birla Finance, BCCI — are competing for recovery. Liquidation rather than resolution appears the likely outcome, though creditor recovery will be minimal given the asset-light nature of the business.
BYJU'S is India's most important startup cautionary tale. Not because it failed — startups fail — but because of the scale of the failure, the people it hurt, and the structural warnings it ignored for years. The product worked. The founder could teach. The market was real. What failed was everything else: governance, capital allocation, acquisition discipline, financial transparency, and ultimately, the trust of every stakeholder the company had. India's startup ecosystem will be studying this case for decades — not for how to build, but for how not to destroy.