Byju’s faultlines and the perils of easy money

livemint.com:

issued notices to India’s #1 edtech company and co-founder Byju Raveendran on a bunch of charges. These include missing documentation on imports and overseas remittances, delayed filings on investments in the company from abroad, and failure in share allotments against such investments. The charges by the ED follow searches the agency did in April at several offices of Byju’s and residences of its top executives.

The latest details are scant and buried in bureaucratese; they will emerge only when the case comes up before a tribunal or court years from now. Drama was, however, full on Monday. The ED told the world of the show cause notices with a late evening post on X.

“Adjudicating Authority issues show cause notices to M/s. Think & Learn Private Limited and Byju Raveendran for violation involving an amount of Rs. 9362.35 Crore under FEMA, 1999," it said.

Reporters who caught a whiff of the notice earlier on Monday got a strong denial from Byju’s. The ED’s tweet later in the evening made the company and its leadership look like amateurs. Hindsight is 20/20 vision and let’s use that lens to take a look at what went wrong and what ails Byju’s — and whether it can be turned around.

First, why care about Byju’s? Had things gone well for the company and it had listed on the stock markets, it would easily be among India’s 50 most valuable public companies. Even at $22 billion, as it was valued at its peak by VC/PE firms, Byju’s would have been placed higher by market capitalization than automaker Mahindra & Mahindra, Adani Ports, and Tata Steel. Slightly more and it would rub shoulders with software-to-soaps conglomerate Wipro.