No July salaries for Byju’s employees yet

Embattled edtech company Byju’s is yet to pay July salaries to its thousands of employees and its Founder and CEO, Byju Raveendran, on Tuesday addressed workers, promising swift resolution despite facing several legal challenges. 

In an email to employees, he said salaries will be paid promptly, even if that means raising more personal debt.

The company recently faced a serious challenge that pushed it into insolvency due to a dispute with the BCCI.

“We settled the case and were on the brink of regaining control of our finances after the NCLAT ruled in our favour,” Raveendran wrote.

Over the last several weeks, “several accusatory labels have been made against us – including reckless and damaging allegations that we are fugitives," he noted.

Raveendran further said he has always been transparent about his whereabouts and activities, and there has never been an attempt to avoid legal or financial obligations.

“The foreign distress lenders have been litigating against us and appealed this ruling in the Supreme Court. The apex court has issued a temporary stay on the NCLAT's decision, which means the control of the company's accounts has not yet been restored to us,” he told employees.

Hence, founders are unable to infuse more capital to pay salaries like “we have always done over the past many months”.

As a matter of fact, “out of the Rs 3,976 crore disbursed as salaries to the team over the past two years, Rs 1,600 crore was infused by Riju (Raveendran) personally,” Byju said.

He also emphasised that the ED investigation against Byju’s is restricted solely to procedural deficiencies under FEMA, such as delay in filing Annual Performance Reports (APRs) with respect to duly compliant overseas investments arising from the delayed statutory audit.

He further said the company is on the verge of reversing the negative business cycle that began two years ago, showing clear signs of recovery.

“We are ready to launch Byju’s 3.0, an AI-driven, hyper-personalised educational platform low on cost and high on impact. I want to remind all of you that we are still the largest edtech platform globally with 150 million students using our products and services every month,” said the founder.