The insolvency of Indian education technology company Byju’s threatens to be the biggest upset in a celebrated startup sector, unleashing a long battle by thousands of panic-stricken employees to recover dues and protect their careers. <\/p>\n
Once a darling of global investors, valued at $22 billion in 2022, Byju’s became popular by offering online training courses during the Covid-19 pandemic, but is now locked in a dispute with US lenders seeking $1 billion in unpaid dues. <\/p>\n
Reuters interviews with dozens of its employees, parents of students and a review of WhatsApp chats show a growing sense of desperation as people plan to take the offensive against the company whose board stands suspended with assets frozen. <\/p>\n
“A lot of people, including myself, have stopped taking classes because there’s no point doing charity for the company anymore,” Sukirti Mishra, 29, said on a conference call with Reuters held by about 60 employees of Byju’s unit WhiteHat Jr. <\/p>\n
Mishra, who once earned $1,200 a month teaching mathematics courses, now faces the anger of parents after she halted classes for their children, she said on the call attended by Reuters. <\/p>\n
But she herself is struggling to pay medical bills and loans installments, after having gone unpaid for months. <\/p>\n
Byju’s, which is battling the insolvency move in court to try and regain control, did not respond to Reuters’ queries. In court papers it has warned of a total shutdown of services as the insolvency proceeds. <\/p>\n
India’s Supreme Court is set to hold on Thursday its next hearing in the insolvency process it allowed to continue last week, when it sided with the protesting US lenders. <\/p>\n
After three months without pay, many of Byju’s 27,000 employees are considering street protests or lawsuits. <\/p>\n
Since a court-appointed officer took charge of the company, about 3,000 of them have filed claims, providing bank statements as proof, said one senior company executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. <\/p>\n
“I guarantee this: When we regain control, your salaries will be paid promptly,” company founder and former billionaire Byju Raveendran assured staff this week in an internal memo seen by Reuters. <\/p>\n
Employees face a long road ahead as it could take months to find a new buyer, or liquidate Byju’s assets. And the law gives no guarantee that employees and teachers can recover all their dues in the end. <\/p>\n
Byju’s, started in 2011, has suffered numerous setbacks in recent months, from boardroom exits and criticism over delayed financial disclosures to an auditor resignation. <\/p>\n
Investors such as Dutch technology investor Prosus accused Raveendran of mismanagement in disputes that became public, though the executive has denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The insolvency of Indian education technology company Byju’s threatens to be the biggest upset in a celebrated startup sector, unleashing a long battle by thousands of panic-stricken employees to recover dues and protect their careers. Once a darling of global investors, valued at $22 billion in 2022, Byju’s became popular by offering online training courses during the Covid-19 pandemic, but is now locked in a dispute with US lenders seeking $1 billion in unpaid dues. Reuters interviews with dozens of its employees, parents of students and a review of WhatsApp chats show a growing sense of desperation as people plan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}