BENGALURU: Troubled edtech firm Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran has pledged his home and also a house property owned by family members to pay salaries to the company’s employees, according to sources. Sources said Raveendran has raised money mainly to pay salaries to nearly 15,000 employees as the company faces a severe cash crunch. Reports suggest that two homes owned by the founder’s family in Bengaluru and his under-construction villa in Epsilon, a gated community, have been offered as collateral to borrow $12 million. Last week, it was reported that the edtech giant has been delaying paying salary for some employees and the company cited technical glitches for it.
But the edtech firm confirmed that all its employees have received their November salary by Monday. The company was valued at $22 billion in July 2022, but investors have been marking down its valuation and recently Amsterdam-listed investment company Prosus marked down its valuation to less than $3 billion. Earlier in October when Hurun India Rich List 2023 was released, Raveendran did not find a mention in it as in March in the Hurun Global Rich List he was mentioned as the world’s second-richest entrepreneur. With a wealth of $3.3 billion, he and his family were ranked 994th on the global list.
Byju’s has been dealing with many challenges including a government probe as the federal probe agency had initiated investigation on the basis of various complaints regarding the foreign investment received by the company Think and Learn Private Limited and the business conduct of the company. However, Byju’s said that the queries received were solely technical in nature such as delay in filing Annual Performance Reports. It reported an EBITDA loss of Rs 2,253 crore in FY22 compared to Rs 2,406 crore reported in FY21.The firm will soon sell its US-based digital reading platform Epic for about $400 million.