Trouble for edtech major Byjus continues. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has again slashed Byju’s valuation, this time to $8.2 billion. With this, the company’s valuation is down 62.7% from $22 billion when it last raised fresh capital in October 2022. BlackRock marked down Byju’s valuation three months after it first reduced the value of its holdings in the Indian company. BlackRock now owns less than 1% in Think and Learn Pvt Ltd, the parent company of Byju’s.
Regulatory filing in US securities
In a regulatory filing with the US securities watchdog for the quarter ended March 31, 2023, BlackRock pegged the value of Byju’s at about $8.2 billion. This is more than 60% lower than the $22 billion valuation ascribed to the company at the time of its last fundraise in the year 2022.
The signs have been there for sometime. In February this year, a fund managed by BlackRock had cut the value of its investment in Byju’s by nearly 50% to $2,400 per share in its annual report for the year ended December 2022, putting the valuation at about $11 billion. The edtech compay’s other key investors include Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, Prosus and Tencent.
In trouble since 2021
Byjus appears to be under weather since mid-2021 when it announced its first round of layoffs in a massive cost-cutting exercise initiated to streamline its operations. Earlier this year too, Byju’s reportedly laid off another 1,000 employees including several senior executives in verticals like strategy, technology and product.
Read Also
In October 2022, the company said it was laying off 5% of its employees totalling around 2,500. However, as per reports the total layoffs were much higher in scale and are said to be in the range of 10,000.
The Bengaluru-headquartered company also filed its audited results for FY21 after an 18-month delay in September 2022, reporting a loss of Rs 4,588 crore, which was 18 times its loss in the previous year.
FacebookTwitterLinkedin
end of article