Co-founder of beleaguered edtech start-up BYJU’S, Divya Gokulnath, in a video posted on her LinkedIn about a month ago, said that her husband and CEO Byju Raveendran would travel nine cities in a week to teach students across India. She even claimed that he would take Math classes in packed stadiums.
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“Byju Raveendran would travel to nine cities every week to teach students across India seven days a week,” she said, while tracing the journey of the edtech start-up.
In the video, Gokulnath recalled the start of the company as Byju’s Classes in 2007, and said, “With just a rented classroom and a single batch of 40 students, we embarked on a journey to revolutionise education in India. But because what we taught and how we taught was unique and effective, that one batch led to so many more batches and soon, we had to shift to big auditoriums.”
She also stated that as more students enrolled in their classes, they began taking classes in stadiums. “We hired a stadium. It was packed to capacity. Byju would stand in the middle of a six-sided screen and take Math classes. Kids would sit in pin-drop silence and listen to Math in a series of workshops,” she said. Calling them as “Math concerts”, Divya Gokulnath added that her husband took classes in stadiums such as the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Delhi and turned them into the “world’s biggest classroom” with 25,000 students.
“Nobody thought it was possible, but we did it,” Gokulnath said in the video. She added that as the intention to teach more and more students grew, an out-of-the-box thought occurred in their minds.
“We couldn’t have built more stadiums so we again took an out-of-the-box approach and decided to go digital. We hired our first 300-member team from our students, who were part of our earlier batches,” she stated.
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BYJU’S, once India’s most valuable start-up, counts investors such as General Atlantic and BlackRock among its backers, but has seen its auditor and multiple investor board members resign in recent weeks. Three board members – Peak XV Partners, Prosus and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – quit following the resignation of auditor Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
The Indian start-up has let go of thousands of employees this year while grappling with multiple legal and financial woes. It has also cut down on its office spaces in Bengaluru, two sources told Reuters on Monday, as the company tries to cut costs and ramp-up liquidity.
Meanwhile, Prosus, an investor in BYJU’S, said on Tuesday the company’s management “regularly disregarded advice” despite repeated efforts by the Dutch-listed tech firm’s former director to improve governance.
Prosus – which slashed its valuation of BYJU’s to $5.1 billion from $22 billion last year – said the decision for its director, Russell Dreisenstock, to step down from Byju’s board last month was mainly because he was “unable to fulfil his fiduciary duty to serve the long-term interests of the company and its stakeholders.”
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Earlier, Byju Raveendran penned an emotional note to employees after addressing them in a virtual townhall. In his note, the CEO tried to assure employees that his company, along with the edtech sector, is here to stay.
“Tough times may test us, but they also reveal our true strength. I assure you that EdTech is here to stay. We are here to stay. We have not come this far to only come this far,” Raveendran wrote to employees.
