Byju’s Divya Gokulnath calls company's FY21 results 'second blockbuster after 'Brahmastra''

Edtech unicorn Byju’s co-founder Divya Gokulnath has called the company’s financial results as the second blockbuster of the year, referring the first to the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer magnum opus, Brahmastra. 
 
In a LinkedIn post shared on Tuesday morning, Gokulnath wrote, “The second blockbuster release of this year, after Brahmastra, was Byju's financial results. I have not seen Brahmastra yet, but I do happen to know Byju's results. Because, as its Director, I was involved in its making.”
 
She further added that just like movie reviews, sensationalism “results in more clicks than truth in this age of 280-character reading attention spans.”
 
She wrote that in the 18 months that followed FY21, the Bengaluru-based company has grown four times, and the reported “widening losses” in FY21 have been cut down to half in FY22. 
 
“I have never had any problems with the stories written about us. In fact, the content of most of the reports on our results is positive. But the headlines are another matter,” she wrote.
 
Gokulnath also picked up five headlines of different media agencies and issued clarification against each one of them. She also urged people to judge both the movie Brahmastra and the financial results of the company after seeing the entire picture.
 
“You may ask why bother about such headlines in this annus horribilis of startups? Because I owe it to our 50,000 family members and 150 million plus students,” the unicorn’s co-founder concluded. 

The company released its FY21 results last week. The edtech giant, owned and operated by Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, saw its consolidated losses widen nearly 20 times to Rs 4,588.75 crore from Rs 231.69 crore in FY20, as per company’s financial statement. 

Founded by Gokulnath and Byju Raveendran in 2011, Byju's was valued at $13 billion in FY21. It has raised $5.5 billion in funding according to Crunchbase and is backed by the likes of Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers, CPPIB, General Atlantic, Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Sofina, and Tiger Global. Other players inching closer rivaling Byju's in this sector are Vedantu, Unacademy, Eruditus, upGrad, Physicswallah, and more.