Early backers in talks to sell stakes in Byju's

Lightspeed, Chan Zuckerberg, others look to offload partial or full stakes in firm

- Sneha Shah & Raniani Raghavan

Byju's early investors, including Lightspeed Investment Partners and Chan Zuckerberg, are seeking buyers for their partial or full stakes in the edtech company as they look to book profit, four people with direct knowledge of the talks said.

A few have farmed out 'soft' mandates to investment banks to look for buyers, they said, requesting anonymity.

"These investors have been around for a long time and would be now looking to cash out. The talks are in initial stages, and final valuation is yet to be decided," said one of the four people, who added that a deal could be struck at a 25-30% discount to the company's last funding valuation.

A company executive, who did not want to be named, disputed that some investors were looking to exit, saying that no investor was seeking to exit the edtech company.

To be clear, founder Byju Raveendran has the right of first refusal option in share purchase agreements with Think & Learn Investors. This clause gives Raveendran the right to purchase investor shares before any other buyer. This means that even if selling investors found buyers for their stakes at a particular valuation, founder Raveendran would hold the right to match the price or buy those shares at a higher price.