BYJU's to miss group level profitability deadline, results delayed again

Edtech firm BYJU's will not be able to meet its March 2023 deadline to achieve group-level profitability, as it envisioned in its earnings in October last year, reliable sources said on Monday. On top of it, its results for most of the months for the current fiscal year are delayed again.

Sources told IANS that the company, which has sacked thousands of employees to date and has taken deeper cuts, is still unable to achieve profitability at group level amid mounting losses.

In October after firing 2,500 employees and consolidating its business in the country, Mrinal Mohit, CEO, BYJU'S India business, had said that "these measures will help us achieve profitability in the defined time frame of March 2023".

At a group level, BYJU's had said its top priority is to achieve "overall profitability by March 2023".

However, this appears impossible now with the company still struggling to stem growing losses.

Last week, the edtech major laid off another 15 per cent of its employees, or more than 1,000 people, mainly from its engineering teams, as the company continues phased layoffs to remain growth-oriented in a global economic meltdown.

Between April-July 2022, the company logged a revenue of Rs 4,530 crore. Post that, there has been no communication from the company about the pending results.

The edtech unicorn reported a loss of Rs 4,588 crore for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2021.

BYJU's had claimed it clocked gross revenues of nearly Rs 10,000 crore in FY22.

Meanwhile, according to sources, BYJU's acquisition of Delhi-based offline test preparatory services provider Aakash for nearly $1 billion is still incomplete and Aakash Chaudhry, Co-Promoter and Managing Director of Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL), has resigned from the board.

When reached, Aakash declined to comment.

New reports emerged in December that BYJU's, which may have seen a definite erosion in its last market value at $22 billion, hasn't paid several of its vendors for months.

According to Morning Context, "some of the payments are due since March and there is trouble with their clearance. In the eight months to October 2022, cumulative dues to vendors have crossed Rs 90 crore".

When reached, BYJU's had not offered a comment on this report.

In seemingly fresh trouble for BYJU's, some lenders had asked the edtech unicorn to repay part of a $1.2 billion loan they recently bought into as they renegotiate terms of the debt.

The demand from creditors comes at a time when BYJU's was in the process to restructure the loan.

--IANS

na/vd