Two US investors owe a total of $250 million to Byju’s, said a spokesperson for the Indian edtech giant on Monday.
The Bengaluru-based startup is yet to receive $250 million from Los Angeles-based fund Sumeru Ventures and US investment firm Oxshott Capital Partners who participated in a $800 million funding round of the edtech decacorn in March this year, the spokesperson said.
Part of this sum was rolled over from an investment announcement made in September 2021 (as part of the company’s $340 million June 2021 round featuring investors such as UBS Group, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADQ) that Oxshott would be joining the company’s cap table. That unrealised investment was part of the $800 million funding round announced by the company in March this year, the spokesperson clarified. Oxshott is yet to pay and so is Sumeru Ventures, which was part of the March 2022 round.
“Of the $800 million round announced this March 2022, $400 million funding from the founder is complete. Of the remaining $400 million, $150 million has come in and the rest is expected from Sumeru and Oxshott by end August 2022,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Sumeru and Oxshott are expected to infuse the $250 million by the “end of August” as it has been delayed due to “macro-economic reasons”, the spokesperson said.
The delay in securing the funding was first reported by news portal The Morning Context.
Byju’s funding round in March was led by its founder and chief executive officer Byju Raveendran who contributed half the capital, taking the firm’s total valuation to $22 billion, making it India’s most valuable startup.
Raveendran financed his funding through bank loans against a portion of his stake in Byju’s.
Byju’s counts Prosus Ventures, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India and Lightspeed Venture Partners among its backers.
Other shareholders include Blackstone, Phoenix Rising—Beacon Holdings and Zoom founder Eric Yuan.
Byju’s, operated by Think and Learn Pvt. Ltd, was launched in 2015 to offer personalized learning programmes to school students in India.
