The cofounders of troubled edtech startup BYJU’S, Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath, have accused certain entities of orchestrating a targeted campaign of intimidation and pressure tactics against their inner circle.

In a podcast with news agency ANI, Gokulnath claimed that multiple individuals associated with the company, including legal teams and senior management, were threatened, with unknown individuals visited the homes of the company’s executives.

“The strategy we now come to understand is that (to) try and weaken Byju by blaming and pulling everybody around him who supports him… just pull anybody and anyone. Even our lawyers have been threatened. They’ve been told that their licence will be cancelled. I don’t want to take their names. This is the level to which we are being intimidated or they’re trying to intimidate us by sending people to our homes,” Gokulnath alleged.

Responding to a question about whether the alleged threat actors live in India, Gokulnath replied in the affirmative. She added that people “who look like goons” were sent to intimidate the edtech startup’s executives, who are close to the founders.

“They are everywhere. They send people who look like goons. They think we will get intimidated. They don’t know what we are made of. They don’t know where we come from… ” added Gokulnath.

The cofounder of BYJU’S said that his biggest mistake was opting for the $1.2 Bn Term Loan B (TLB) in 2021, despite having sufficient equity funding options.

“Only mistake if you ask me, which created all this is that we shouldn’t have taken this, when we had enough equity options, we shouldn’t have taken this term loan at that time in 2021… We had raised $5 Bn before that. We were not doing it out of desperation. It was all (a) collective decision,” Raveendran said.

He also admitted that BYJU’S expanded “too fast” into 21 countries, driven by a “mandate” from its global investors to grow and transform learning. He conceded that a more gradual approach might have been prudent.

“When we tried expanding from India to the whole world, we made some business mistakes. Maybe we could have taken it a little bit slowly. We were growing a little too soon, too fast. We went from India to 21 new countries. But if you ask me, in that context of 2019 to 2021… we had 160 investors, world-class investors, and equity investors. All of them (said) this was the mandate – grow, grow, grow and change the way kids learn,” Raveendran said.

He accused certain TLB creditors of BYJU’S of creating a narrative to take control of the edtech company. He also alleged that certain “vulture lenders” were trying to bring down the valuation of the company by “tarnishing” the founder’s name.

Not stopping there, he accused a section of the lenders of running a malicious media campaign to create an image of him being a “fugitive”. Training guns at Glas Trust, a consortium of BYJU’S TLB creditors, he claimed that the consortium undertook a “massive fraud” in cahoots with auditor EY India and legal Khaitan & Co..

Inc42 has sent a detailed questionnaire to Glas Trust on the allegations. The story will be updated on receiving a response.

Raveendran, during the podcast, also termed the as BYJU’S “best acquisition”. Citing his rationale, he said that the offline chain was 5% of the the edtech major’s total valuation at the time, adding that the deal provided the company an opportunity to expand Aakash’s network to smaller Indian towns.

“It was actually one of our best acquisitions. Today, (there is) all this narrative around acquisitions… when you make six big acquisitions, four of them are doing well, but everyone talks about the two and that’s how it works right,” added Raveendran.

Conceding that there were “messaging problems” with its acquisition of WhiteHat Jr. in the first 12 months, Raveendran lamented a missed opportunity with the coding platform. The concept of Indian teachers instructing students globally in mathematics, if not coding, through the platform was a “huge opportunity lost”, he said.

At the heart of all this is the $1.2 Bn TLB availed by the troubled edtech startup from 37 financial institutions through a credit agreement in November 2021. As funding winter escalated, the company defaulted on the payments, which led to the creditors dragging BYJU’S to various courts.

The aftermath saw the lenders sue BYJU’S in various courts across the US to cough up the borrowed amount and other relief. Earlier in March this year, a in connection with a case involving alleged fraudulent transfer of $533 Mn out of the $1.2 Bn TLB extended to the troubled edtech startup.

The company has been trying to douse fires on multiple fronts. Besides a bevy of legal cases, it , dwindling valuations, delayed salaries, regulatory scrutiny, battles with investors, among others. However, the biggest existential crisis facing the

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