Ready to pay back lenders' money, asserts Byju

PTI New Delhi: Troubled edtech f i r m BYJU'S founder Byju Raveendran on Thursday said that he is willing to pay back the entire money to lenders if they are willing to work with him. During a two-and-a-halfhour call with the media, Raveendran said that lenders will not get any money i f the process of in solvency against the company continues."If they are willing to work with me, I am willing to give them money back before I take a single rupee out. We paid USD 140 million but they wanted the entire USD 1.2 billion which we have already committed or invested by then. There is no way we could have given them back for a long time.

Most lenders wanted to settle but one or two wanted to make a killing out of it," Raveendran said. At present, BYJU'S is undergoing insolvency proceedings. The insolvency proceeding was triggered after BCCI approached NCLAT to recover their Rs 158.9 crore dues. The company settled the dispute with BCCI after paying the entire dues following which NCLAT revoked the insolvency proceedings. However, US lenders through their agent Glas Trust challenged the NCLAT order in the Supreme Court which restored the insolvency proceedings against the edtech firm. BYJU's has raised $1.2 billion Term Loan B (TLB) -- a loan which is issued by institutional investors, through its holding company Byju's Alpha from USbased lenders.