Byju Raveendran

Byju Raveendran
Born	Byju Raveendran 1980-01-055 January 1980 (age 46) Azhikode, Kannur district, Kerala, India
Nationality	Indian
Education	Government College of Engineering, Kannur (B.Tech, mechanical engineering)
Alma mater	Government College of Engineering, Kannur
Occupation	Entrepreneur, educator
Years active	2003-present
Employer	Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd. (BYJU'S)
Title	Co-founder and chief executive officer, Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd.
Term	2011-present
Known for	Co-founder and CEO of BYJU'S Building the world's most valuable education technology company The collapse of BYJU'S from a $22 billion valuation
Spouse	Divya Gokulnath (m. 2009)
Children	3
Parents	Raveendran Shobhanavalli

Byju Raveendran (born 5 January 1980) is an Indian entrepreneur and educator who co-founded the education technology company BYJU'S with his wife Divya Gokulnath. He has served as chief executive officer of its parent company, Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd., since its incorporation in 2011.

Raveendran began teaching students preparing for the Common Admission Test in 2003 and built the practice into a company that, at its peak in 2022, was valued at approximately $22 billion, making it the most valuable education technology company in the world and the most valuable startup in India's history. BYJU'S reported more than 150 million registered users across markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Indonesia, and it expanded through a series of large acquisitions, including the $1 billion purchase of the test preparation chain Aakash Educational Services in 2021.

The company's decline was as rapid as its rise. BYJU'S defaulted on a $1.2 billion term loan, its auditor and several board members resigned in 2023, and by 2024 its principal investors had written their holdings down to zero. Insolvency proceedings were initiated against Think & Learn in India, a United States bankruptcy court found in 2025 that Raveendran and others were responsible for a scheme that diverted $533 million from a financing subsidiary, and the Enforcement Directorate issued notices alleging foreign exchange violations of ₹9,362 crore. Raveendran has disputed the findings against him and has characterised the events as an attempted corporate raid.

The rise and collapse of BYJU'S is widely treated as the defining case study of the Indian startup boom of the late 2010s and of the corrections that followed it.

Early life and education

Family and childhood

Byju Raveendran was born on 5 January 1980 in the village of Azhikode in Kannur district, Kerala, to Raveendran and Shobhanavalli. Both parents were schoolteachers: his father taught physics and his mother mathematics.

He attended a Malayalam-medium school where both parents taught. By his own account he skipped a large proportion of his classes to play sport, learning the material at home instead, an arrangement his teachers tolerated and his family supported. He played six sports, including football and cricket, and has cited Lionel Messi, Roger Federer and Brian Lara as influences, arguing that their discipline reflected genuine interest rather than obligation. He has connected the observation to his later pedagogical position that learning is most effective when driven by curiosity rather than fear of failure.

Engineering studies

His parents wanted him to study medicine. Raveendran chose engineering instead, on the reasoning that medical study would leave him no time for sport. He took a B.Tech degree in mechanical engineering at the Government College of Engineering, Kannur.

Career

From shipping engineer to teacher

After graduating, Raveendran joined a multinational shipping company as a service engineer, work that involved extended periods abroad.

During a holiday in 2003 he helped a group of friends prepare for the Common Admission Test, the entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Management. They encouraged him to sit the examination himself. Without formal preparation he scored in the 99th percentile.

He took the test again to establish whether the result was reproducible and scored in the 100th percentile, receiving interview calls from the Indian Institutes of Management. He declined to take up a place, having no interest in an MBA.

The results attracted attention among students, and a growing number sought his help with management entrance preparation. This marked his transition into teaching.

Byju's Classes

In 2007 Raveendran founded a test preparation business, Byju's Classes, teaching mathematics for competitive examinations. The operation grew unusually large for offline coaching. He began teaching classes of several thousand students at a time in auditoriums and stadiums, travelling between Indian cities, and the format became a distinguishing feature of the business and of his public profile.

In 2020 he conducted what was described as Asia's largest live class, at the Indraprastha Stadium in New Delhi, attended by more than 25,000 students.

Think & Learn and the learning app

In 2011 Raveendran co-founded Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of BYJU'S, with Divya Gokulnath. Initial operations centred on video-based preparatory modules for competitive examinations, and the company then moved into the school curriculum segment.

In August 2015 he launched BYJU'S The Learning App, initially offering video modules in mathematics and science for students in grades 4 to 12 as well as candidates for competitive examinations. The product was built around concept-driven, self-paced instruction with adaptive assessment, and operated on a freemium subscription model in which basic content was free and advanced features required payment.

In 2016 Think & Learn received investment from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic vehicle established by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, becoming the only Indian startup in which the organisation invested.

Expansion and peak valuation

Growth accelerated sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, when nationwide school closures in India moved education online. The company reported that its paid subscriber base more than doubled between 2020 and 2021, and that registered users exceeded 150 million by 2022 across several international markets. By July 2022 the app had been downloaded more than 150 million times, and the company reported average daily usage of 72 minutes.

BYJU'S reached a valuation of approximately $22 billion, the highest of any education technology company anywhere and the highest of any Indian startup.

The company undertook a series of acquisitions between 2019 and 2021 to broaden its products and geographic reach. The largest was the purchase of Aakash Educational Services, an Indian test preparation chain with a large physical presence, for close to $1 billion in April 2021. Other acquisitions included the American children's reading platform Epic and the Singapore-based Great Learning. In 2021 Raveendran held advanced discussions to acquire the competing platform Vedantu for a reported $600 million to $700 million; the transaction did not proceed.

In a funding round of approximately $800 million in 2022, Raveendran invested $400 million of his own money, raising his equity stake to about 25 percent. Other participants included BlackRock, Sumeru Ventures and Vitruvian Partners.

Between 2013 and 2023 the company attracted foreign direct investment of about ₹28,000 crore, reported as the largest inflow to any Indian startup.

According to Forbes, in 2020 Raveendran, Gokulnath and his brother Riju Raveendran had a combined net worth of approximately $3.4 billion. Raveendran's personal peak was estimated at about $2.1 billion. By 2024 his net worth was assessed at zero.

Collapse of BYJU'S

Financial and governance breakdown

The company's difficulties became public in 2022 and 2023. Audited accounts for the financial year ending March 2021 were filed some eighteen months late and disclosed a loss of about ₹4,588 crore, far larger than had been expected. Questions were raised about revenue recognition practices and about the aggressiveness of the company's sales methods, including reports that agents had pressured low-income families into loan-financed subscriptions.

In June 2023 the auditor Deloitte resigned, citing the continued delay in the preparation of financial statements. Three directors representing major investors, from Peak XV Partners, Prosus and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, resigned from the board at about the same time, leaving it composed only of Raveendran, Gokulnath and his brother.

The company carried out repeated redundancies. Roughly 2,500 jobs were cut in October 2022, about 4,000 more were announced in September 2023, and further reductions followed in 2024, with terminations reported to have been conducted by telephone. More than 10,000 employees left over the two-year period.

The term loan default

BYJU'S had raised a $1.2 billion Term Loan B in the United States in 2021, an unusual instrument for an Indian startup. The company fell into dispute with its lenders and missed payments.

In November 2023 the Delaware Court of Chancery held that BYJU'S had defaulted and that the lenders had been within their contractual rights to replace the sole director of BYJU'S Alpha, the American subsidiary through which the loan had been raised.

On 22 January 2024 the lenders petitioned the Bengaluru bench of the National Company Law Tribunal to begin corporate insolvency resolution proceedings against Think & Learn. Separate insolvency petitions were filed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, over unpaid sponsorship dues, and by the service providers Teleperformance Business Services and Surfer Technologies. The tribunal admitted the BCCI petition in July 2024.

Investor write-downs

BlackRock reduced its valuation of BYJU'S progressively, cutting it by 95 percent to about $1 billion in January 2024 and to zero by June 2024.

Prosus, which held about 9.6 percent, reduced its carrying value to zero from $493 million, recording a loss of that amount for the year to March 2024.

The move from a $22 billion valuation to a write-down to nil in under three years is among the largest reversals recorded for a private company.

Shareholder action

On 1 February 2024 shareholders signed a notice calling an extraordinary general meeting to address the company's governance, including proposals to change the board and the leadership. On 23 February shareholders voted to remove Raveendran as chief executive. He said afterwards that the vote was invalid for want of a quorum, and a court order placed the implementation of the resolution on hold pending further review.

The Aakash dispute

The Aakash acquisition, once the most valuable asset in the group, became the subject of protracted litigation. BYJU'S shareholding was diluted to a minority position, with Manipal Health emerging as the single largest shareholder. The National Company Law Tribunal ordered a status quo on Aakash's shareholding in March 2025 while the dispute proceeded. BYJU'S lenders subsequently sought a stake of roughly 30 percent in Aakash as part of settlement discussions.

Legal proceedings

Enforcement Directorate

In April 2023 the Enforcement Directorate, India's financial crime agency, searched BYJU'S offices and Raveendran's residence in connection with an investigation under the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

In November 2023 the agency issued show cause notices to Think & Learn and to Raveendran alleging violations amounting to ₹9,362.35 crore. The alleged breaches concerned failure to submit import documentation, delayed filing of documents relating to foreign direct investment, and failure to realise export proceeds.

In February 2024 the agency issued a look out circular against Raveendran, restricting his ability to leave India.

BYJU'S Alpha and the $533 million

The most serious findings against Raveendran concern the movement of $533 million of the term loan proceeds out of BYJU'S Alpha, the Delaware financing subsidiary, into an entity called Camshaft Capital, an unregulated fund established by a young principal with no institutional track record. The lenders alleged that the transfer was designed to place the money beyond their reach.

In February 2025 the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware found that Riju Ravindran, Camshaft Capital and Think & Learn, acting alongside Byju Raveendran, were responsible for orchestrating and executing an unlawful scheme that defrauded BYJU'S Alpha and its lenders. The court also imposed contempt sanctions in connection with the failure to disclose the location of the funds.

Singapore contempt proceedings

On 26 May 2026 a court in Singapore sentenced Raveendran to six months' imprisonment for contempt of court. The order was subsequently set aside on the basis that the contempt was civil rather than criminal in character.

Raveendran's position

Raveendran has consistently denied wrongdoing. He has argued that BYJU'S was the target of a coordinated attempt by creditors and certain investors to take control of a viable business, describing the events as a corporate raid, and he has pursued litigation on that basis. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal placed the bidding process for BYJU'S assets on hold pending the outcome of related proceedings, and in July 2026 the National Company Law Tribunal paused the insolvency bidding process until 31 August.

Recent activity

In 2025 Raveendran announced BYJU'S 3.0, a relaunch involving expansion across Indian states with a model in which teachers use artificial intelligence tools to support their instruction rather than replacing classroom teaching with video. The relaunch has been conducted at a scale far below that of the original business.

Public roles and recognition

The Government of India established a National Startup Advisory Council on 21 January 2020 through the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, and Raveendran was nominated as a non-official member in January 2021. The council, chaired by the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, was tasked with supporting innovation, startups and employment creation.

Raveendran was named to the Fortune 40 Under 40 list in 2020 and to the Bloomberg 50 in the same year. He was invited to present at Harvard Business School on two occasions following the publication of a case study on the company.

Views on education

Raveendran has argued that conventional education trains students to solve problems that are given to them rather than to identify problems worth solving, and he has criticised the Indian system for a shortage of effective teachers and adequate classrooms.

He has said that the examination system instils fear in students and places excessive weight on memorising facts rather than on encouraging genuine understanding. The pedagogical claim underpinning BYJU'S products was that visual, self-paced instruction would allow students to learn concepts rather than procedures.

Critics have argued that the company's commercial practices were at odds with these stated principles, pointing in particular to the sales model, which relied on direct selling to parents and on financing arrangements that placed families in debt.

Philanthropy

In September 2020 Raveendran and Gokulnath launched Education For All, an initiative providing free access to BYJU'S learning content for students from low-income households in India. The programme was reported to have set a target of reaching five million students by 2025.

Personal life

Raveendran married Divya Gokulnath in 2009. They first met in Bengaluru when she joined one of his CAT preparation classes as a student. She became a co-founder of BYJU'S and has been closely involved in curriculum development and in work with teachers. The couple have three children, two sons and a daughter.

His brother, Riju Ravindran, was a director of Think & Learn and a substantial shareholder, and has been a party to several of the legal proceedings concerning the company.

External links

• BYJU'S official website