BYJU’s FY21 loss zooms to ₹4,588.75 cr

Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, the parent company of edtech giant Byju's, has reported a total loss of ₹4,588.75 crore for the financial year ended 31 March 2021, as compared to ₹262 crore in the previous fiscal. The company's revenue for the fiscal year 2020-21 stood at ₹2,428 crore, as compared to ₹2,381 crore during the previous fiscal year. BYJU’s says it has received an unqualified report for FY21 from its auditor, Deloitte Haskins & Sells.

The company's revenue for FY21 is down around 40% from what was projected earlier. “The revenue for FY 21 of the BYJU’S group is ₹2,428 crore. There was significant business growth in FY21 over FY20, but since this is the first year where new revenue recognition started because of a COVID-related business model change, almost 40% of the revenue was deferred to subsequent years,” BYJU’s says in a release.

As per BYJU’s, the most valued Indian start-up with a valuation of $22 billion, the rationalised growth between FY21 and FY20 is a result of the "changes made in the way BYJU’s recognises its revenue".

Also, the company has registered nearly ₹10,000 crore in gross revenues in FY22 and says its K-12 education business is showing accelerated growth, the unaudited financial results show. Between April-July 2022, the company logged revenue of ₹4,530 crore, it says.

The company's operating revenue for FY20 was ₹2,381 crore, while its loss stood at ₹262 crore. It had reported a net revenue of ₹1,306 crore and the loss of ₹8.9 crore in FY19.

Notably, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram in July had written to the government’s serious fraud probe agency, seeking an investigation into the finances of edtech unicorn Byju’s. In a letter to the director of Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), he raised concerns over three instances related to Byju’s, including two funding rounds and a delay in furnishing financial statements for the financial year 2020-21.

He alleged that Byju’s had not gotten its financial statements for the financial year 2020-21 audited, which will in turn take more time to file the cost audit report to the corporate affairs ministry.

Byju’s had raised $800 million in a funding round in March 2022, led by Viturvian Partners, Sumeru Ventures and BlackRock at an estimated valuation of $22 billion, becoming the most valued unicorn of the country. Byju Raveendran, the founder and CEO of the eponymous company, had invested $400 million during the round in his personal capacity.

It has been alleged that Sumeru Ventures and Oxshott Capital Partners are yet to infuse some $250 million into the company committed months back. Byju’s attributed the delay to ‘macroeconomic changes’.

The startup has also been in news for layoffs in recent months. It went overboard on acquisitions over the past couple of years, helped by heavy investor funding to the tune of over $2 billion. But this year it laid off about 500 employees working with group companies WhiteHat Jr and Toppr.