Edtech firm Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup at $22 billion, has seen a massive (95%) drop in its valuation, and is now worth $1 billion, TechCrunch has reported.
As per the report, asset manager BlackRock, at the end of October 2023, valued its shares in Byju’s at $209.6 apiece, translating to a valuation of $1 billion, as against a peak of $4660 apiece in 2022, which translated to $22 billion. The asset manager owns a stake of less than 1% in the Bengaluru-based company.
BlackRock, like other mutual fund investors, makes multiple disclosures about its portfolio in a year, without, however, explaining the rationale behind worth valuation adjustments. Also, this is not the first time when the asset manager has slashed the worth of its holdings in the embattled edtech major.
Additionally, BlackRock is not the only investor that has severely downgraded their valuation of the startup, though this is, by far, the most drastic adjustment of the Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath-founded company. Prosus, which has a stake of around 9%, said late last year that its estimation of the unicorn stood at ‘sub $3 billion.’
The downgrade marks a stunning reversal of fortune for Byju’s, which spent more than $2.5 billion in 2021 and 2022, acquiring more than half a dozen firms globally. Byju’s, which has been backed by Peak XV Partners, Lightspeed, UBS, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, has raised over $5 billion across equity and debt, in the past decade.