Cash-strapped edtech major Byju’s senior leadership has rallied behind CEO and founder Byju Raveendran as the company deals with crises on all fronts.

In a letter, the edtech firm’s entire leadership, including India head Arjun Mohan, CFO Nitin Golani, and others, expressed confidence in Byju Raveendran’s leadership. businessline has reviewed a copy of the letter.

“We, the entire leadership team of Byju’s (all 32 top leaders), want to reach out to you to express our wholehearted support for the exemplary efforts of our founder and CEO, Byju Raveendran,” it said.

The note comes a day after a consortium of key shareholders in Byju’s issued a notice to the company, calling for an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to address “persistent issues,” including a proposed change of management at the firm.

Letter to employees

The edtech firm has also hit out at “certain investors” in an internal note addressed to employees, claiming that they are conspiring against the company and seeking the ouster of its founder, Byju Raveendran. It was also noted that the company has secured commitments to subscribe to more than 100 per cent of its proposed $200 million rights issue of shares.

“Certain investors, seeing the crisis we faced, saw it as an opportunity to conspire and demand the stepping down of our founder as the group CEO of Byju’s,” the company told employees in the note, a copy of which was seen by businessline.

“We are pained to see this action from a few of the investors who should have supported us in our fight at these challenging times instead of directly speaking to the media. The founders are the largest investors and the greatest fighters for Byju’s,” it added.

It said that when investors hesitated to step up during harsh macroeconomic conditions, the founders personally invested over $1 billion in capital to keep the company’s dream alive.

Byju’s has not yet paid salaries for January amid a liquidity crisis. The company told employees that the success of the rights issue will ensure that the firm has sufficient operational capital to fund its short-term needs from March onwards.

In three days since launching the rights issue, the company said it has already received commitments for more than 100 per cent of the proposed amount. The process will take 25 more days to complete.

“It will ensure we have enough growth capital and also meet all operational liabilities. This will mark the beginning of the final phase of our recovery,” the noted added.

Byju’s told employees that it is now less than a quarter away from achieving operational profitability while acknowledging that it still has old liabilities to settle and short-term growth to secure. However, the success of this rights issue will ensure that it can adequately address these challenges, it said.

Investors have no voting rights

Hitting back at the demand from an investor group for a change in the management and board of Byju’s, the edtech firm said investors have ‘no voting rights to change the chief executive.’

“Under these unfortunate circumstances, we would emphasise that the shareholder’s agreement does not give them the right to vote on a CEO or management change,” the statement said.

The company added that it will continue with the proposed $200-million rights issue that was announced earlier this week for existing shareholders. Byju’s added that it has received encouraging responses from multiple investors.

The company also said that it continues to update the working group on all crucial matters, including ongoing business restructuring, financial position, and audits.

“TLPL has been turning around the business, cutting the monthly burn to near operational breakeven and working on an AI-led technological refresh soon. In context, the actions of some unnamed investors are disruptive at a highly challenging time,” added the company.

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