In a major leadership shake-up, Byju’s announced on Wednesday that company veteran Arjun Mohan is taking over as the chief executive of its India operations, replacing founding partner Mrinal Mohit, who was also among CEO Byju Raveendran’s earliest associates.

The edtech firm said Mohit was quitting to pursue “personal aspirations”.

Arjun Mohan, part of the founding team at the beleaguered edtech firm, had served as Byju’s chief business officer before quitting in 2020 to join upskilling-focused edtech firm upGrad as CEO. Mohan rejoined Byju’s recently and has “spent the last three months working closely with the founder and Group CEO Byju Raveendran,” the company said in a statement.

Old ties: Mohit had been an integral part of Raveendran’s leadership team for over a decade and played a pivotal role in the company’s growth. Mohit, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology, joined Byju’s in 2008. Both Mohan and Mohit reportedly studied under Raveendran when he was preparing students for the Common Admission Test.

Mohit had been overseeing Byju’s India operations since May last year. In an email to employees, Raveendran recounted his long association with Mohit, calling his exit a bittersweet moment, according to Moneycontrol.

While Mohit was quintessentially into sales and climbed the corporate ladder quickly, he was also a divisive figure at work, with little clue on how to run a large business. It’s safe to say that his exit doesn’t come as a surprise.

An expected turn of events? Under pressure to cut costs and push sales, Mohit had been running Byju’s Tuition Centre—the edtech firm’s offline classroom vertical—for the past few months. However, his efforts to streamline operations and achieve sustainable profitability seem to have backfired, alienating the leadership as well as investors.

We’ve written earlier that worried investors had called for Mohit to step away from Byju’s Tuition Centre, especially after three board members and the company’s auditor resigned. In June, Deloitte Haskins & Sells resigned as the auditor for Byju’s over long-delayed financial statements of the edtech firm. To top that, representatives of three influential backers—Peak XV, Prosus NV and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative—quit the Byju’s board citing differences between the company’s leadership and its board. For more context, read: Can Mrinal Mohit be the fall guy for Byju’s Tuition Centre chaos?

Mounting troubles: Last month, Byju’s also saw three senior executives quit—Prathyusha Agarwal (chief business officer), Himanshu Bajaj (business head of Byju’s Tuition Centre) and Mukut Deepak (business head for grades 4 to 10). The edtech firm is also facing issues of corporate governance, valuation downgrades, layoffs, cash crunch and, of course, a $1.2 billion term loan B, which is at the centre of its woes. While efforts are on to resolve the loan problem (also read: Selling Epic and Great Learning won’t solve Byju’s cash flow problem), a fresh lawsuit in another American court has complicated matters for the company.

Read our coverage of Byju’s here.