The edtech giant is stuck with a rising pile of unpaid loans of customers who have cancelled courses even as its founders scour the globe in search of a saviour.
“We were always told, teachers don’t cheat people. If teachers start defrauding, where will we go,” says P over the phone from Jammu. “I saved every penny and put all into my child’s education. And now I am stuck. My child isn’t going to classes. My money is gone. My credit rating has been destroyed.”
P paid almost Rs 40,000 (down payment + first equated monthly instalment) in June 2022 to enrol his child in a batch at a Byju’s Tuition Centre. That is a month’s salary for him. He also took a Rs 2.3 lakh loan from education-focused financial company Avanse Financial Services. The Byju’s salesperson who processed the papers told P he could cancel anytime within a month and get a full refund.
Classes didn’t start for a month. P was finally told that his child will get classes at an Aakash Educational Services tuition centre and not at Byju’s. Worse, his child was enrolled in a batch that was already three months old. The child felt lost. P called
Pradip is a co-founder at The Morning Context and leads our newsletters vertical. He has previously worked at The Ken as a staff writer, at Mint as an assistant features editor and the Deccan Chronicle as a copy editor. He works with a slew of expert newsletter writers across subjects and domains. His own writing spans the gig economy, farmers caught in the crossfire of technology, global warming and parents trapped in the edtech wave. Some of his best stories have come at the intersection of technology and human endeavour.
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