Dear BYJUite,
The last six months have been tough, humbling, and—on a positive note—a great learning experience. Thank you for your complete trust and commitment when things were not the easiest. I look forward to your continued support when things will go smoother, stronger and better than ever before.
Yes, 2022 has not been an easy year for us. This year is not—to quote from the movie Rocky Balboa— “all sunshine and rainbows” for any start-up anywhere in the world and we have been no exception. But unlike many other startups, which have faced external challenges, our challenges have largely been internal. As you all may be aware, our FY21 audit got very delayed. With the media spotlight that is always on us, many baseless theories got floated around to explain the delays, which may have caused anxiety for some of you. If it did, I am sorry about that. But the fact is that we were not adequately prepared to handle the audit for the size of the company we have grown to, and we learnt this the hard way. We have grown in every dimension—products, business models, geographies, customer segments—very quickly, and absorbing both the large scale and scope of this transition required more time than we had earlier imagined. Additionally, we had to make a change in our revenue recognition to account for a new business model we launched during COVID. And finally, we had numerous acquisitions to account for. All of this really stressed our systems, our people and resulted in inordinate delays. But I have always believed that passion, hard work and determination can see anything through. We got through all of those challenges and have now passed this trial by fire. I’m grateful to our colleagues who worked very hard on getting our audit done.
While we struggled on the audit front, our business has been thriving, thanks to all of your efforts. The last financial year (FY22, ending March 2022) was our best year so far and 2022-23 is set to be an even stronger year. The comeback, as they say, is always stronger than the setback. Going forward in FY23 and beyond, we will combine growth with efficiency to ensure sustainability. We have already started shifting our focus towards profitable growth. The overall idea is to allocate resources effectively in order to maximize impact.
A strong 2022 in the face of adverse macroeconomic conditions makes me even more confident that Byju’s is built to last many generations. As the great philosopher Albert Camus said, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
These are our latest financial and operational highlights -
Today, our size and market leadership means that we have a bigger and greater responsibility. Being large is not—and will never be—an end in itself for us. We exist to add value every day to our 150 million students, and that is the basis for our real valuation.
Also read: The comeback is stronger than the setback: Byju's founder to employees
In this roller-coaster year, there is one metric that makes me really motivated about our mission. Byju’s Education for All, our not-for-profit initiative, has now reached nearly 5 million children, for most of whom it is the primary mode of learning. We have commitments to scale this number to 12 million in the next two years at a faster than expected rate. Shaping the future careers of these little ones from underserved communities is our fuel to keep going forever. Building Byju’s is about building lives.
2022 has taught us to remain agile, be open to adjustments and learn from our shortcomings. We will leverage these lessons to emerge even stronger. I look ahead towards the rest of 2022 and the coming years with great optimism and excitement where we will emerge as the largest and most impactful education company in the world.
We are powered by the dreams of 50,000 Byjuites. Each one of us is for the rest of us. I don’t have the great fortune of interacting with each one of you individually. However, I am eternally grateful for your dedication, commitment and passion. We bring the Olympic motto to life through our work. Citius. Altius. Fortius. Faster. Higher. Stronger.
Thanking you,
Byju Raveendran