Byju’s is weighing whether to wind down WhiteHat Jr, the coding platform it acquired over two years ago for a $300 million enterprise value.
India’s most valuable start-up, headquartered in Bengaluru and valued at $22 billion, has been in talks in recent weeks about closing an acquisition once touted as one of the greatest acquisitions of all time. It did, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. A decision has yet to be reached, according to another person familiar with the matter.
The discussion came at a time when Byju’s was cutting costs across the company. The company, which has laid off thousands of employees and cut marketing costs, was until recently spending about $14 million a month on its coding platform, one of his sources said.
A Byju spokeswoman declined to comment.
Byju’s acquired WhiteHat Jr in 2020 for an enterprise value of $300 million. A significant amount of the payment was tied to future growth metrics. Byju’s ultimately spent less than $235 million on the acquisition deal, one of the aforementioned sources said, as did others to discuss personal matters. He said he requested anonymity.
The Coding Unit has been criticized by many for its misleading claims and aggressive tactics against courtroom students. WhiteHat Jr. famously sued some of these detractors, and the move caused even more backlash for the company. He has since dropped the lawsuit. WhiteHat Jr. founder Karan Bajaj (pictured above) said he left Byju’s a year after the acquisition.
Byju’s, which counts Sequoia India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, B Capital, UBS and General Atlantic among its backers, has addressed many of the criticisms the company received over the past year. Byju’s said last month that it no longer has sales representatives visiting students’ homes to pitch parents, and the company now wants to see if a child’s parents can afford to subscribe to the service before signing up. We are conducting tests to determine
