Prosus NV, a tech investor located in the Netherlands, reduced Byju's value to less than $3 billion in November 2023

Prosus NV, a tech investor located in the Netherlands, reduced Byju's value to less than $3 billion in November 2023

Prosus NV, a tech investor located in the Netherlands, reduced Byju's value to less than $3 billion in November 2023

TechCrunch reported on Friday that BlackRock has once again lowered the value of its investment in the edtech company Byju's to around $1 billion, citing disclosures from the US-based asset management.

Compared to its highest worth of $22 billion in 2022, this is 95% less.

The firm is now dealing with a number of issues, such as getting fresh funding, late financial reporting, and legal issues with lenders. These obstacles are compounded by the discount.

BlackRock said at the end of October of last year that it valued Byju's shares at around $209.6 per share, which is less than their peak of $4,660 in 2022, according to TechCrunch.

Byju's didn't respond to an email until just before the story went to publication.

Sources claim that BlackRock owns less than 1% of the business and that investors have different opinions on how much the firm is worth.

BlackRock has previously decreased its stake in an edtech company.

BlackRock's investment in Byju's was valued at around $8.4 billion last year, based on documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the March quarter.

BlackRock has already lowered the start-up's value to $11.5 billion (as of December 31, 2022).

In 2020, it entered Byju's capitalization chart with a $12 billion value.

Byju's shares were valued by BlackRock at around $4,660 per unit in April 2022, resulting in a business valuation of approximately $22 billion.

By the end of December 2022, BlackRock allegedly decreased the value of its shares in Byju's to $2,400 each.

Not only BlackRock is pulling back on its investment in the struggling edtech startup.

Prosus NV, a tech investor located in the Netherlands, reduced Byju's value to less than $3 billion in November 2023.

Prosus is the owner of 9.67 percent of Byju's.

Erwin Tu, the interim CEO of Prosus, revealed the information on the company's earnings call. Prosus has lowered Byju's worth to $5.9 billion as of November 2022.

A Prosus director left the Byju's board of directors in 2023.

One of the edtech company's biggest and earliest investors, Prosus, later revealed the reasons behind its director's departure from Byju's board, stating that the executive leadership of the Indian company had made multiple attempts to seek out "advice related to strategic, operational, legal and Recommendations routinely ignored." as well as corporate governance matters."

Byju's governance and reporting procedures were deemed "not adequately developed for a company of that scale" by Prosus. In June, Russell Dressenstock of Prosus, GV Shankar of Peak XV Partners (previously Sequoia), and Vivian Wu of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative resigned from Byju's board because to concerns over the company's financial standing and corporate governance procedures.

The delay in publishing the company's financial statements also led to the resignation of Deloitte Haskins & Sells, Byju's auditor.

India's most valuable start-up, Byju's, had its fair value almost halved in August of last year by US asset management company Baron Capital Group.

As to the investor's June quarter report, this happened after three important investor board members and its auditor resigned.

Baron Capital reduced Byju's value to $11.7 billion as of June 30 in its April-June quarterly report. Compared to March 31, this was a 44.6 percent decrease from $21.2 billion.

After obtaining $800 million from investors, of whom creator and CEO Byju Raveendran contributed half, Byju's acquired a value of $22 billion in March 2022.

A total of $5.8 billion in capital has been obtained by the firm from investors, including BlackRock, Sequoia, Silver Lake, Tencent, General Atlantic, Sofina, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Sumeru Ventures, etc Vitruvian Partners.

Byju's is reportedly seeking more capital, which would enable the cash-strapped business to pay its debts, maintain operations, and resolve legal issues with lenders.

It must furthermore significantly cut its losses in order to have a long-term viable company plan.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Byju Ajay Goyal departed the organization in November 2023 and went back to work for his former employer, Vedanta Limited.

In order to improve the company's financial operations, long-term business goals, and road to profitability, an experienced global finance specialist was employed in April.

In January of this year, Roshan Thomas, the General Counsel of Byju, left the business, one of many high-ranking personnel to leave in recent months.

One of the main topics of debate during the company's virtual annual general meeting (AGM) on December 20 was the purported absence of internal controls over how the business handles its accounting procedures and resources.

There were perhaps sixty stockholders present at the meeting.

He looked over the company's financial standing and recent headlines, according to sources.put pressure on Raveendran to provide more details about the incident.

A combined loss of around Rs 8,245 crore was incurred by Byju's parent business, Think & Learn, in FY22, as per financial information provided to shareholders.

This amounts to almost Rs 4,564 crore for the preceding time frame.

Sources claim that a major factor in the losses has been WhiteHat Jr., a coding firm that Byju's purchased for around $300 million in 2020 and had to be written off.

Up from Rs 2,280.2 crore in FY21, the company reported consolidated sales of nearly Rs 5,015 crore for the year.

The firm did, however, fall short of the goal set in September 2022, when it was expected to increase its gross sales to Rs 10,000 crore in FY22.

Sources claim that the corporation is undergoing a reorganization under the direction of Arjun Mohan, who recently succeeded Mrinal Mohit as the chief executive officer (CEO) of its India division.

It also revealed new appointments to senior advisor and chief financial officer (CFO) positions in its finance division, naming industry veteran Pradeep Kanakia as senior adviser and Nitin Golani as CFO for India.

Think & Learn's primary business had a 2.3-fold increase in sales in 2021–2022, rising from Rs 1,552 crore to Rs 3,569 crore.

Between FY 2011 and FY 2012, the core business's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) loss decreased from Rs 2,406 crore to Rs 2,253 crore, with margins improving from -155 percent to -63 percent.

Since the company's financial reporting was approved by the auditors, its financial status is predicated on a "unqualified fiscal year 2022 audit".

Prior to this, the corporation intended to turn a profit by March 2023.

But in FY21, it declared a loss of Rs 4,588 crore—a 19-fold increase over the previous year.

It is anticipated that the company would shortly submit financial accounts to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), having postponed filing its FY2012 results to the MCA.