Byju’s – Teacher vs CEO
I have heard good things about Byju as a person , and that he used to be passionate about teaching students when he took classes.
I wonder if he is secretly ashamed of the high pressure mis-selling tactics their sales team is taught to use to guilt parents into buying their over-priced products!
And no, I have never met him, and never missed a chance to invest in his company either!
The truth is that it’s hard to keep both students and investors happy, and I empathise with his dilemma!
Update — 2026. When I first wrote this, Byju's was India's most valuable startup, worth around $22 billion. It has since collapsed. Its investors wrote the value down to near zero, its auditor and independent directors resigned, it defaulted on a $1.2 billion loan, and it was pulled into insolvency proceedings. Thousands of the young people it hired were let go. I take no pleasure in having been right — the human cost was real. I've gathered the whole story, in order, in The Byju's Files.