BENGALURU: Byju’s co-founder Divya Gokulnath has called the edtech company’s financial results as the second blockbuster release of this year after Brahmastra.
After nearly 18 months’ delay, Byju’s reported a consolidated loss of Rs 4,589 crore in FY21. She hit out at the media in a LinkedIn post, saying just like movie reviews, ‘sensationalism’ results in more clicks than truth.
She said Byju’s has grown over 4 times in 18 months post FY21, and its widening losses in FY21 have been cut to half in FY22. She picked up five headlines from different media organisations and issued a clarification.
She said instead of the headline ‘Byju’s lost Rs 12.5 cr every day’ it should have been ‘Byju’s reported Rs 4,500 crore loss in FY21 due to accounting change’ and that they made Rs 27 crore in revenue per day in FY22. “Let’s judge Brahmastra and Byju’s after seeing the entire picture,” she said.
While it was reported that there were five red flags from Byju’s auditor’s notes, Gokulnath posted, “The number of red flags is zero. And that is also the marks I would give to this publication for their headlines.”
Her post clearly shows all is not well with the edtech unicorn. Operated by Think & Learn, the company’s loss widened nearly 20 times in FY21 from Rs 232 crore in FY20.
According to Crunchbase, the edtech company has 55 investors including Byju Raveendran and Vitruvian Partners. It has raised USD 5.5 billion so far. The edtech company backed by Tiger Global has been acquiring many companies- Toppr, Epic!, Aakash, WhiteHat Jr, and 2U, among others- over the past few months.