Blackrock marks down Byju's valuation to $1 bn

Chennai: The valuation of ed-tech start-up Byju’s has been further marked down to $1 billion by its investor Blackrock. This is almost 95 per cent markdown from Blackrock’s earlier valuation.

With this, the valuation of Byju’s, which stood at $22 billion in 2022, has come down to $1 billion.

According to disclosures, BlackRock valued Byju’s shares at about $209.6 in October 2023, down from the peak of $4,660 in 2022 – down by 95.5 per cent. This roughly values the ed-tech company at around $1 billion. In April 2023, BlackRock cut Byju’s valuation by nearly half to $11.5 billion. Another investor Prosus which had valued the edtech firm at $5.97 billion in November 2022, had recently marked down the value of its stake in Byju’s to less than $3 billion, according to a report by Techcrunch.

While Prosus holds 3 per cent stake in Byju’s, Blackrock has 1 per cent stake.

Byju’s has been backed by over a dozen movers and shakers in the industry, from Peak XV Partners to Lightspeed, UBS and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Byju’s was preparing to go public in early 2022 through a SPAC deal that would have valued the company at up to $40 billion. However, the funding winter in the private equity market and the internal troubles of the company saw its investors backing off leading to its valuation crumbling down.

Byju’s is facing a lot of challenges. It is struggling to raise capital, pay salaries, and pay off its debt. Byju’s has seen some of its key officials exiting in recent times. Byju’s had become a unicorn in 2018 and had seen its valuation going up fast during the pandemic when online education was in high demand. The company made several highly-priced acquisitions during this time. However, students going back to physical school along with funding winter made things difficult for ed-tech companies, including Byju’s.