Byju's founder faces Singapore jail sentence in QIA dispute as $22 billion edtech collapse deepens

Byju Raveendran, the founder of collapsed Indian education technology company Byju's, is appealing a Singapore High Court ruling that sentenced him to six months in prison for contempt of court in a dispute with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) over a $150 million loan.

A QIA spokesperson told AGBI that "no settlement appears achievable" and that it would "continue to pursue the repayment of the debts owed to it," directly contradicting Raveendran's claim in the Financial Times that lenders including QIA had "agreed in principle" to a settlement.

The contempt finding relates to a $150 million loan provided by Qatar Holdings, a QIA subsidiary, to Byju's Investments, a Singapore-based entity of which Raveendran was personal guarantor.

QIA alleges the loan fell into default, and an interim arbitration award issued in Singapore last July ordered Raveendran and Byju's Investments to repay $235 million including interest, according to Raveendran's legal adviser Michael McNutt. The court found Raveendran had disobeyed multiple orders dating back to April 2024, including allegedly transferring assets to a third party while subject to a global freezing order on his assets. Raveendran attended the hearing by video link and was ordered to surrender to officials. According to the FT, he was not in Singapore.

The Singapore case is one front of a multi-jurisdictional legal reckoning that has followed the disintegration of what was once India's most valuable startup. Byju's (formally Think & Learn Pvt Ltd) raised over $6 billion from investors including Sequoia, Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Tencent, BlackRock, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Silver Lake, Prosus and QIA itself, reaching a peak valuation of $22 billion in October 2022 and spending more than $2.5 billion acquiring companies globally between 2021 and 2022. The company sponsored the FIFA World Cup in Qatar and India's cricket team at the height of its profile. QIA participated in Byju's final funding round, a $250 million raise in October 2022, alongside other existing investors.

The collapse accelerated through 2023 and 2024. Deloitte resigned as auditor in June 2023 alongside three board members and the chief financial officer. Prosus, which held approximately 9%, publicly criticised the company for failing to heed investor advice. BlackRock slashed Byju's implied valuation from $22 billion to $1 billion by January 2024. Shareholders including Prosus voted to remove Raveendran as CEO in February 2024, though he contested the decision.

The most explosive allegations concern a $1.2 billion Term Loan B raised through Byju's Alpha, a US subsidiary incorporated in Delaware. Lenders led by GLAS Trust accused Raveendran and his associates of diverting $533 million of the loan proceeds to Camshaft Capital, a hedge fund operated by a 24-year-old named William Morton whose registered address was at a pancake restaurant in Miami.

In February 2025, a Delaware bankruptcy court found Riju Ravindran (Byju Raveendran's brother and a director of Byju's Alpha), Camshaft and Think & Learn responsible for defrauding lenders, with the judge describing Riju as "the most incompetent officer or director of a company in Delaware history."

In April 2025, Byju's Alpha filed a separate lawsuit against Raveendran himself, his co-founder and wife Divya Gokulnath, and associate Anita Kishore, alleging they "co-orchestrated and executed a lawless scheme to conceal and steal $533 million." A $1 billion default judgment against Raveendran in November 2025 was subsequently reversed for a retrial on damages after fresh submissions.

Raveendran's legal adviser McNutt told AGBI the Singapore jail sentence arose from "disputes over document disclosure in ongoing proceedings, not a finding of fraud, dishonesty or any wrongdoing" and said an appeal would be filed soon. He argued the orders Raveendran was accused of breaching were based on arbitration rulings that remain under challenge.

QIA described the contempt finding as the result of "serious wrongdoing" including violation of a global freezing order and said it rejected Raveendran's characterisation of the proceedings as a pressure tactic.