Downfall of Byju’s, India’ s hot edutech startup, wipes out US debtholders

On Wall Street, it was an easy sell: The most valuable startup in India’s history, a tech company with Silicon Valley cachet, a charismatic founder and visions of dominating the online-education business that seemed sure to be one of the post-pandemic’s next big things.

More importantly, Think & Learn Pvt — more widely known as Byju’s — was willing to pay handsomely to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars in the US just as the world’s central banks were holding interest rates at next to nothing.