According to a source directly involved in the transaction, India's Byju's paid Blackstone Inc. $234 million to settle its debts owed to the private equity firm as part of a $950 million deal to purchase Aakash Educational.
The payment made on Thursday was for a 38% or so stake in the learning center network that Byju's acquired in April 2021 that was owned by Blackstone.
According to the source, Byju's paid all of Aakash's shareholders during the closing process with the exception of Blackstone because the PE firm had agreed to deferred payment.
There were no comments available from Blackstone on the issue.
The payment of debts coincides with the popular edu-tech startup in India, which was last valued at $22 billion, suffering sharply increasing losses.
For the fiscal year that ended in March 2021, Byju's losses grew significantly to 45.64 billion rupees ($574.06 million), while its revenue decreased by 3 per cent.
The pandemic-induced spike in demand for online education benefited the company greatly, and it attracted investments from some of the biggest venture capital funds and financiers, including Sequoia Capital and Mark Zuckerberg's Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, to finance its astronomical rate of growth.
Byju's, a company that came to represent the success of Indian startups, spent a total of $2.5 billion to acquire businesses like Aakash, Epic, a company based in the United States, Tynker, a platform for kids to learn how to code, Great Learning, and Toppr.
(Source:www.livemint.com)
The payment made on Thursday was for a 38% or so stake in the learning center network that Byju's acquired in April 2021 that was owned by Blackstone.
According to the source, Byju's paid all of Aakash's shareholders during the closing process with the exception of Blackstone because the PE firm had agreed to deferred payment.
There were no comments available from Blackstone on the issue.
The payment of debts coincides with the popular edu-tech startup in India, which was last valued at $22 billion, suffering sharply increasing losses.
For the fiscal year that ended in March 2021, Byju's losses grew significantly to 45.64 billion rupees ($574.06 million), while its revenue decreased by 3 per cent.
The pandemic-induced spike in demand for online education benefited the company greatly, and it attracted investments from some of the biggest venture capital funds and financiers, including Sequoia Capital and Mark Zuckerberg's Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, to finance its astronomical rate of growth.
Byju's, a company that came to represent the success of Indian startups, spent a total of $2.5 billion to acquire businesses like Aakash, Epic, a company based in the United States, Tynker, a platform for kids to learn how to code, Great Learning, and Toppr.
(Source:www.livemint.com)
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