(Nov 4): Indian education startup Byju’s first results in years revealed that losses at its parent company narrowed only marginally amid a pandemic-era boom in business, underscoring challenges for the firm embroiled in a dispute with creditors over a US$1.2 billion (RM5.68 billion) loan.

The Bengaluru-based online tutoring firm’s parent Think & Learn Pvt posted a loss of 22.5 billion rupees (RM1.28 billion) at an operational level in the financial year ending March 2022, compared with a 24 billion rupees loss a year earlier, it said in an emailed statement. Total income for the firm more than doubled to 35.7 billion rupees.

The results underscore how Byju’s — once the poster child for India’s booming startup economy — is struggling to escape a post-Covid funk. Creditors sued Byju’s this year after it breached covenants on a US$1.2 billion loan. The standoff cast a spotlight on founder Byju Raveendran, whose meteoric rise from tutor to head of the country’s most valuable tech startup wowed investors.

At its peak, Byju’s spent heavily to meet surging pandemic-era demand for its services when schools and universities shut their doors. Once a sponsor of India’s national cricket team, it bought several firms in the US and elsewhere and tried to expand globally.

But growth has slowed since classes resumed, and the company’s challenges have been exacerbated by the months-long legal dispute that’s only showing signs of intensifying.

Delays in submitting financial results drew scrutiny from regulators and led to the resignation of Deloitte Haskins & Sells as the company’s auditor this year. In April, Indian plainclothes officials raided its Bengaluru offices, seizing laptops and publicly linking the world’s most valuable education-technology startup with possible foreign exchange violations. Several US-based investors accused Byju’s of hiding half a billion dollars, prompting lawsuits.

One of its main investors, Prosus NV, slashed the value of its holding in June in a move that pegged the startup’s total valuation at US$5.1 billion. As recently as last year, Byju’s raised funds at a US$22 billion valuation.