News Flash
India’s most valuable Startup, Byju’s financial results of FY21 were released after more than a year’s deadlock with the auditors - Deloitte.
The results sent shockwaves across the ecosystem as revenue grew by only 4% despite the much-anticipated Lockdown boom. Here's the historic trend:
Reading between the numbers
Byju’s revenue from India actually contracted by 40% to ₹987Cr during the year.
1/4th of the losses suffered in FY21 is contributed by WhiteHat Jr. - the coding for kids Startup that Byju’s acquired in Aug 2020.
Byju’s spent a massive ₹2,250Cr (2.5 times of FY20) in ads and promotions. This includes the fat sponsorship bills of IPL and Indian Cricket team (appx. 15%).
Did the entire Industry fail to capitalize on the Lockdown boom? Guess not. Both Unacademy and Vedantu grew by over 4 times in FY21.
All this while its paid subscriber base grew by 57% to 5.5Mn subscribers.
AND its valuation ALSO grew by 57% from $8.25Bn in Feb’20 to $13Bn+ in Mar’21 - quite evident on what the investors were interested in.
LOOKING UP?
The teaser: The Bengaluru-based start-up recently teased its top line numbers for FY22, saying that it has accrued gross revenues of ₹10,000Cr, although unaudited at the moment.
Our disclaimer: Very similarly, back in Aug’20, in an interview with Business Standard, Byju Ravindran had revealed that they’re anticipating to get really close to $1Bn in revenue in FY21. Yes, $300Mn (₹2,280Cr) of revenue is indeed QUITE close.
Byju’s email to employees: Following public hue and cry over the meagre results of Byju’s, Raveendran penned an email to all its employees in Sep’22. Here’s 2 extracts that are worth your attention:
The CEO said that the Company has started shifting its focus towards profitable growth and revenue of $2Bn was well within its sights. He further added that they had clocked more than ₹1,000Cr in sales in each of the last 5 months and it is nearly 20 times the size of the next 2 competitors in the K12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) segment.
The CEO said, "Long growth story short, we now have the world's largest self-learning platform (Byju's learning app), the world's largest live learning platform (Byju's classes and Byju's 1-on-1), the world's largest reading platform (Epic!), the world's largest kids’ coding community (Tynker), and one of the world's largest not-for-profit edTech initiative (Byju's Education for All).
Ravindran could have also added that with an EV/R of over 40 times, they’re also the world’s most-expensive Ed-tech platform, as moneycontrol likes to put it.
This article is a part of the September'22 edition of our Startup Newsletter. Here's the complete publication:
