BYJU ON THE CORPORATE GUILLOTINE

Will educator-turned-entrepreneur Byju Raveendran be sidelined in-or even ousted from-his eponymous edtech as the newly constituted board advisory council struggles to bring the company back on to the profitability path?

- Vinita Bhatia

In July this year, Think and Learn Pvt. Ltd (T&L), the parent company of edtech decacorn Byju’s that hit rough waters a year ago, appointed former State Bank of India chairman Rajnish Kumar and former chief financial officer of Infosys T.V. Mohandas Pai to its newly formed board advisory council (BAC). Byju’s, India’s most valued startup, is currently juggling multiple issues ranging from lawsuits, capital crunch and slashed valuations to governmental investigation into its financial activities, layoffs and closure of offices. While it remains to be seen if Kumar and Pai can put in place the missing corporate governance guardrails that brought Byju’s to its current state, T&L will have to make some drastic changes to survive.

One such option on the cards is removing its co-founder and CEO Byju Raveendran from his current position. This is akin to what happened with Ashneer Grover, co-founder of fintech start-up BharatePe. Both founders are in the dock for financial discrepancies. Their start-ups witnessed resignations of senior executives amid reports of corporate misgovernance and both roped in industry veterans to put the house in order. While Grover was ousted from the company, is Raveendran too headed in the same direction?