Thursday, 6 April 2023, Bangalore, India
The ed-tech company BYJU is planning to raise fresh funding of $700M at a valuation of $22B; some people from the inside who knows about the development have informed Yourstory about it. This fresh funding round is in its final stage and about to close in one or two weeks.
It has been reported that the existing investors will also contribute in this round of funding. This news was first published by The Financial Express. It reported that this fresh funding was led by two West Asia-based sovereign wealth funds and large private equity firms. One of the provisions of the agreement states that $400-$500 million is set aside for debt payment.
BYJUs has still not commented on this report. This development was revealed after BYJUs appointed Ajay Goel as the chief financial officer, and it has also delayed the filing of the FY22 financial to the Registrar of the companies. Last year the company delayed the filing by 18 months.
It was recently revealed that BYJU’S intended to generate up to $250 million through the sale of convertible notes by Aakash Educational Services Ltd, which it had purchased in April 2021 for a deal worth almost $950 million in cash and stock. Following the acquisition of $800 million from Blackrock, Sumeru Ventures, and other investors in March, BYJU’S last raised $250 million in a funding round from its current backers, including Qatar Investment Authority, in October 2022. In October of last year, it also accepted a 300 crore rupee unsecured loan from Aakash.
BYJU’S last month recommended to its lenders that they revisit its debt financing agreements, as part of the deal it offered a rise in the interest rate on its $1.2-billion term loan B (TLB). At the time of the raise, this was the largest TLB raised by an Indian company, yet the loan was unrated. The edtech company has recently come under fire for its accounting practises and significant downsizing. Based on a report by YourStory in February, BYJU’S had fired 900 additional employees from various teams in a subsequent wave of layoffs. The company, whose last valuation was $22 billion, posted a loss of Rs 4,564.38 crore in FY21, a figure higher than its loss of Rs 305.5 crore in FY20.
