Prosus Writes Down $22 Billion Education Startup Byju's To Zero

Dutch technology investor Prosus has written down its stake in Indian edtech firm Byju's to zero, a stark fall for a startup once valued at $22 billion. Prosus, holding a 9.6% stake, cited a "significant decrease in value for equity investors" in its earnings report.

Byju's, which sells online courses to K12 students, is grappling with financial and governance issues and declining revenues. The departure of its auditor and board members, including a Prosus executive, further rattled investor confidence last year.

Whose valuation?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Who came up with this valuation and what was it based on?

Their $300M lifeline investment is enough to develop an entire K12 curriculum.

What did they expect for revenue?

The open culture people should make this whole idea silly, which perhaps it did.

Re:

[Luckyo]

>whose valuation climbed to a peak of $22 billion in early 2022

Final stage of the pandemic. That was a time when there was a significant amount of belief that we would retool our entire societies to remote teaching and remote learning in addition to remote working. Because we actually did it temporarily in many nations.

Add to this being an Indian company, a nation where hundreds of millions of people with educational efforts is borderline impossible due to geographic and political realities. I suspect th

Re:Whose valuation?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What I find baffling is the $22 billion valuation; even in the context of a downright historic period for remote learning. It's obviously not trivial to put curriculum together and line up the various remote tutoring and grading labor; but there's nothing especially 'sticky' about it(especially given that Byjus was doing a lot of high-pressure direct-to-consumer sales; rather than going for public education sales where there's some chance of achieving regulatory capture).

Various more-or-less-terrible LMS software options are essentially commodified, as are video conferencing systems you can white-label for remote tutoring, and end user hardware locked down and loaded with edu-content is something you can get from basically any OEM/ODM.

Unless there's some sort of really elegant pedagogical breakthrough that they have juicy patents on that can't be worked around it just seems like there's nothing there that would keep them from being stuck competing largely on price.

It's also pretty dramatic when you compare it to the boring legacy educational publishers that actually make money: Someone like Pearson plc, who is burrowed like a tick into all sorts of textbook procurement pipelines, has a market cap of only $8.3 billion. And you are telling me that these guys were worth $22 billion? Not in a zillion years.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Off the top of my head with no up to date research (last I looked into India's education issues was pre-pandemic), we're talking about unlocking something around half a billion people's potential (+- about 200 million). 22 valuation billion means about 44 USD per person if I remember the numbers correctly. At the worst, it would be around 100USD per person. That's peanuts when you consider how much governments actually spend on education.

So this actually tracks if the promise is to unlock functional educati

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

At the worst, it would be around 100USD per person.

That's roughly two month's income for a rural Indian farm [newsreel.asia], of which 125% is needed for food and other immediate costs. The daily household budget is around three US dollars.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Correct. That's why you don't sell those programs to farmers, but to the governments.

Re:

[nikkipolya]

Indian governments don't give a hoot about education. Their top 3 priorities are corruption, more corruption and bribing voters with freebies to remain in power (to continue corruption). Any private company receiving money via contracts will be fleeced to the bone by the government officials. Working with government is not a viable option for any private company in India. There are even mutual funds with that theme: "Our fund invests in companies that have got nothing to do with the government". And they do

Re:

[Luckyo]

This is an exceedingly naive take. Education unlocks economic potential, which unlocks higher corruption opportunities. Corrupt officials understand the difference between a little money and a lot of money very well.

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

"Who came up with this valuation and what was it based on?"

From what I read, it's from a private equity sale in March 2022 in which they raised $800 million, presumably from granting a 3.6% ownership of the company to the buyers. https://www.business-standard.... [business-standard.com]

Re:

[atomicalgebra]

$300 million to develop an entire K-12 Curriculum? Damn. I could have done it for 10% of that before AI. Now I could do it now for a fraction of that. And they were spending the money in India where tech costs are low.

Mark Zuckerberg Was Bullish on BYJU's

[theodp]

Mark Zuckerberg in 2016 [chanzuckerberg.com]: "As part of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Priscilla and I are investing in an Indian education technology company we're excited about called BYJU's. [...] I'm optimistic about personalized learning and the difference it can make for students everywhere. That's why it's a major focus of our education efforts, and why we're looking forward to working with companies like BYJU's to get these tools into the hands of more students and teachers around the world."

It was reported i

Re:

[nightflameauto]

fuckin wild that zuckerberg is the most "normal" of the tech billionaires today. guy just wants to grill and do mma

also whens that musk cage match? the zuck looked ready to throw down, sounds like somebody got cold feet....

I thought one of their moms called the whole thing off. Which is too bad, because here in America, if there's one event all of us would buy tickets to, it's watching techbros bro-down MMA style. Even though it would be a short match, with Elon's donut powered flop-style up against Zuck's actual fighting skills, it'd at least be fun for those few moments it lasted. Maybe have a WWE style ring-filler at the end, with actual athletes power-bombing both of them? You know, just to be sure we get our time's worth

Re:

[boulat]

Technically speaking Melon Husk is an African-American, so this would've been a bad PR for Zuck to beat him like a drum.

Stock analysts are AWESOME.

[Eunomion]

Guy says: "This company is worth $22,000,000,0000.00."

Week later: "$0.00".

any indian still in india is a crook

[elcor]

that's the sad post about a great civilization that tried to emulate western values but chose the wrong ones