$22bn valuation to bankruptcy and missing $533mn: How Byju's unravelled across two continents

On a winter afternoon in late 2022, Byju Raveendran stood on a stage in Bengaluru addressing a hall packed with founders, investors, policymakers and journalists. India’s most valuable startup founder spoke with the conviction of someone building a global education empire. “Every year, in the last five years, we have invested $200 million into our product development... in the last six years, we have invested $1.3 billion in creating our product,” he told the room. It was the kind of line he would continue repeating even as his company tumbled from a $22 billion valuation into a bankrupt, litigation-ridden entity.
At that moment, no one in the audience anticipated what the next three years would bring. But there were signs.