Mahi .’s Post

📉 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐑𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐁𝐘𝐉𝐔's Valuation to Zero: What Happened? 📉 BYJU, once a unicorn, now serves as a cautionary tale for startups, highlighting the significance of sustainable growth and transparency. How can other startups steer clear of a similar fate? #StartupLessons #EdTech #Valuation #BusinessGrowth #Transparency #BYJUs #BlackRock

#StartUpNews | 30 prominent Indian startups including Razorpay, CRED and Pine Labs form the #StartupPolicyForum (SPF) — a unique alliance to boost collaboration with policymakers & regulators, to accelerate India's new-age economic growth Aishwarya Anand | Young Turks Shweta Rajpal Kohli

HSBC's recent assessment values Byju's at $0, along with other unicorn startups like Meesho, Pharmeasy, and StackOverflow Valuation down from previous round. This highlights the importance of focusing on value creation over valuation in the startup ecosystem. An exemplary case is Zoho, which revolutionized the software as a service market without external funding, emphasizing customer success. #startup #funding #valuation [Read more](https://lnkd.in/dPk7i8Jh)

💔 From $22B in 2022 to ZERO today. The fall from grace of once the world’s most valuable Edtech startup and the froth that goes with growth at all costs. I shared an article from TechCrunch earlier this year of how investors were then valuing the company to be worth nothing. Now, the founder has come out and admitted that the enterprise he founded is worth ZERO. This is despite BYJU’s raising $200m early this year. Some crazy burn rates we are talking about here, not to mention all the liabilities that the company carries to fuel its growth ambition. Investment theses in tech companies, especially the Edutech ones, need a serious correction, along with other considerations like SAFEs “based on YC templates” offered by startups that operate in small markets and have never qualified to be YC candidates in the first place - I wonder if such founders are aware of whether these ‘SAFEs’ are safe for Who in the transaction. Yet, founders who have raised money from investors may have at one time or another, believed that their investors will back them up no matter what, when they were urged to go all out and all in to grow their enterprise, often at all costs. We could almost hear encouraging words like “don’t worry about burn, stay focused (on growth) and we will back you up all the way”, or in Chinese, that could sound like “敢敢去做,别担心。我们支持你”, and in BYJU’s case, “(The founder) alleged that many of his more than 100 investors had urged him to pursue aggressive expansion into as many as 40 markets. But, he added, those very investors got cold feet when global markets tumbled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending the venture capital market into a downward spiral.” Thus, when investors back out (either for legitimate reasons or maybe they just didn’t trust the founders anymore), the deck falls and all sorts of instruments have to be called in to keep the company afloat. For BYJU’s, it was the rights issue to raise $200m this year, putting the company’s value to be $250m, from $22B just two years back. What then, is the problem here: Founder blindness? Founder arrogance? Investor frothiness? Promises broken? In any case, fingers will point, and lawsuits could fly in BYJU’s. For startup founders and business owners: - When is a suitable time to raise $? - And when they have raised the money, how should founders manage their investors and the $ they have in the bank? What are your thoughts on this? Eric Lam I help entrepreneurs scale for exit. I wrote 📙The Fast Founder: from Startup to Exit in 36 Months 📕. Delighted to have you connect with me on matters regarding startups, education & Gen-AI for the layman. #edtech #investing #fundraising #fallfromgrace #founders #accountability #investorrelations https://lnkd.in/g9TqTaHW

As an #EdTech startup founder, this topic truly resonates with me. Sustainable growth shouldn't come at any cost. Over the past four years at Sauwat.Education, I've been cautious with expenses—perhaps too cautious, which may have slowed our rapid expansion. We've operated with just around $60K USD and are now taking a step back to rethink our business model. I'm excited to collaborate with friends from an IT outsourcing company to enhance our product, focusing on creating Digital Twins of Real Teachers. My take on raising funds: nothing beats natural, systematic commercial growth. Until you achieve that, keep searching for the right business model. BYJU'S is a remarkable company that inspired me when I started my own venture. However, companies like Byju's face challenges similar to how Nokia lost its market share by not adapting to new realities and relying too heavily on existing offerings. In the EdTech world, relying solely on video recordings for learning is becoming outdated. The future lies in engaging live interactions with students. If you're interested in more of my insights on EdTech and startup growth, let's connect! Please follow my page for updates. I also welcome your comments and positive thoughts. 😊

💬 "The rapid decline of BYJU's highlights the urgency for both founders and investors to rethink what sustainable growth truly means in the edtech space. As someone who’s navigated the high-growth demands of the education sector and managed expansive digital transformation projects, I’ve seen how scaling comes with not just ambition but heavy responsibility. Aggressive expansion may seem enticing, especially with investor backing, but without solid foundations, it becomes a fragile structure. For founders, there’s immense pressure to prioritize fast returns and market dominance—sometimes at the cost of fiscal prudence and long-term stability. Investors, too, play a role here: providing resources and encouragement to fuel growth, but a constructive balance between growth and accountability is essential. The BYJU’s case serves as a cautionary tale: It underscores the importance of resilient business models. It highlights that financial prudence should be baked into edtech ventures, not treated as an afterthought. The real takeaway? Founders and investors alike must embrace growth strategies that foster longevity, not just valuation. Edtech has the power to reshape learning worldwide—but only if we can get this balance right." #Edtech #SustainableGrowth #StartupLessons #InvestorRelations #Accountability

A scam that was very systematically created by founders and every board member. Pushing companies to bankruptcy is one of the very well-known tricks of private equity. This helps them evade the pending dues and settlements for less. What's interesting is the unavailability of sufficient data to suggest the financial engineering of this scam by each investor and the money each one made. The point is that private equity’s success does not always depend on the success of the companies they own. Through a range of tactics ( valuation, rollups, dividend recap, bankruptcy etc, etc ) they can extract money from the businesses they buy, whether or not those businesses thrive or die. Founders become partners in such crimes to get rich and most end up playing the same game as angel investors eventually. Snapdeal. Housing, GoMechanic, Rahul Yadav, Dunzo, and Cred aren't modern-day mysteries but a living testimony to the murkier realities of the game called "Passing the Parcel" where funders and founders become rich even when the entire startup collapses like a house of cards. BYJU and its dealings with private equity should be a use case of everything that's wrong with the glamour and greed around funding which entrepreneurs drool over mindlessly and media cheerleads as their agents. Media that covers startups are funded by the VCs to gag them and they seldom investigate the role of board members rather help them bury the truth. Understanding this game is crucial for entrepreneurs to choose what's best for their company and vision. #startups #entrepreneurship #privateequity #founders #vcs #venturecapital

HSBC believes that $22 billion Byju’s is now worth zero In a probe note, HSBC estimates that the Indian edtech elephantine Byju’s, erstwhile valued astatine $22 billion, is present worthy nothing. The write-down successful its estimation makes Byju’s 1 of the astir spectacular startup slides successful caller memory. It follows a precise unsmooth twelvemonth for the Bengaluru-based startup, which was India’s astir invaluable not agelong ago. Byju’s struggled to conscionable its fiscal reporting deadlines past year, yet falling abbreviated of its people by implicit 50% arsenic it faced assorted governance issues. Those issues — coupled with abrupt resignations from its auditor and committee members — contributed to derailing a $1 cardinal fundraise deliberation by Byju’s. Prosus, 1 of Byju’s largest investors, publically slammed the startup, alleging it “regularly disregarded advice” from the backer. Amid the backing crunch, Byju’s past raised $200 cardinal astatine a post-money valuation of astir $250 million this twelvemonth – a backing that is being legally disputed by immoderate of the largest Byju’s investors, including Prosus. It stands to crushed then, that successful the probe enactment HSBC besides estimated the worth of Prosus’ 10% involvement successful the Indian startup to beryllium zero due to the fact that of the ongoing ineligible cases and backing crunch. The slope besides estimated that a fig of different startups are not astir arsenic invaluable arsenic they erstwhile were. It estimates that the online pharmacy Pharmeasy should beryllium valued astatine $2.8 cardinal (down from a precocious of $5.6 cardinal successful 2021), societal commerce Meesho $2.5 cardinal (down from $4.9 billion), Indian agritech startup DeHaat $400 cardinal (down from $800 million), and an different unicorn logistics startup ElasticRun $800 million. The slope estimates that Stack Overflow, a steadfast Prosus acquired past twelvemonth for $1.8 billion, should beryllium valued astatine $900 cardinal and GoodHabitz to $100 cardinal (down from $200 million). “We use a 50% discount to the latest backing round/acquisition terms for assets wherever the past circular is older than six months to relationship for the caller correction successful akin edtech/SaaS companies’ nationalist assemblage multiples,” HSBC added. Byju’s didn’t instantly respond to a petition for remark extracurricular concern hours. https://ift.tt/aTRi13w

Byju’s founder says his edtech startup, once worth $22B, is now ‘worth zero’! Byju Raveendran the founder of the embattled edtech group Byju’s, acknowledged on Thursday afternoon that he made mistakes, mistimed the market, overestimated growth potential and that his startup, once valued at $22 billion, is now effectively worth “zero.” Speaking to a group of journalists, Raveendran said the company’s aggressive acquisition of more than two dozen startups to expand into new markets proved fatal when financing dried up in 2022. Byju’s was planning to go public in early 2022 with several investment bankers giving the firm valuation as high as $50 billion, TechCrunch reported earlier. He alleged that many of his more than 100 investors had urged him to pursue aggressive expansion into as many as 40 markets. But, he added, those very investors got cold feet when global markets tumbled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending the venture capital market into a downward spiral. Raveendran said many of his investors “ran away,” and the departure of three key backers – Prosus Ventures, Peak XV, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – from the company’s board last year made it impossible for the startup to raise additional funds. Representatives of the aforementioned three firms as well as auditor Deloitte left the startup’s board last year, citing governance issues. Byju’s has since entered insolvency proceedings, and Raveendran, who no longer controls the company, said: “It’s worth zero. What valuation are you talking about? It’s worth zero.” Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup, counts BlackRock, UBS, Lightspeed, QIA, Bond, Silver Lake, Sofina, Verlinvest, Tencent, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Owl Ventures, and World Bank’s IFC among its backers. It has raised more than $5 billion to date. Raveendran said he remains hopeful that his startup will make a comeback. “I have nothing to lose. I came from a small village. I invested everything I had into the startup.” #startup #edtech #founder https://lnkd.in/dUtZCeUx

India's largest Edtech unicorn - once anyway, is worth too much trouble to track according to Blackrock. Two years ago when Zilingo fallout was all the rage, a secret squirrel told me that it was nothing next to the upcoming shit show that was to be Byju. "BlackRock’s disclosure for the period ending March this year follows a rough year for the Bengaluru-based startup, which was India’s most valuable startup not long ago. Byju’s struggled to meet its financial reporting deadlines last year, ultimately falling short of its revenue projections by more than 50% as it faced various governance issues." Byju is just a badly managed company, it made some terrible decisions; and then doubled down in the worst possible way (they got funding from vultures). And now the shit show is coming to a conclusion.