Indian EdTech Giant Byju’s Under Pressure for Failing to Publish Accounts

Indian EdTech company Byju’s is facing intense scrutiny from the government, as well as investors and creditors, over failures to publish its accounts while funding dries up for education businesses.

The company had been doing well because of the stay-at-home COVID-19 restrictions, the Financial Times wrote Saturday (Sept. 10). It is valued at $22 billion and raised almost $6 billion from investors over several rounds, having also taken out $1.8 billion in loans.

However, it hasn’t received at least $250 million in funding from two investors, according to unnamed sources speaking with the FT.

Additionally, Byju’s hasn’t met its own deadlines to file results for the fiscal year ending in March 2021, and the Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs had asked the company to explain the almost year-and-a-half delay.

Byju’s explanation is that its auditor, Deloitte, hasn’t signed off on its accounts, due to the complexity of reporting its funds because of acquisitions it made in the 2021 financial year. The company’s quick international expansion and aggressive acquisition strategy have caused doubts in investors, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Byju’s has also cut staff and budgets as the EdTech sector has been hit hard by students returning to physical schools.

Byju’s didn’t respond to a request for comment from PYMNTS.

The use of digital learning tools has seen some scrutiny as of late, with a study from the Digital Futures Commission finding that several popular tools might be risky for children’s personal data.

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The study found that both Google Classroom and ClassDojo have operated according to “opaque” privacy policies and legal terms which might put the data at risk.

As that’s been happening, European governments have been trying to curb the use of Big Tech for education — some regions in Denmark and Germany have already banned the use of Google products in schools, while the French data protection authority, CNIL, is working closely with several EdTech projects.