Shivam Saklani

Once valued at $22 billion, the Indian edtech company Byju's has fallen to below $2 billion today. When Byju Raveendran, the founder of the company, began with ambitious plans to disrupt the Indian edtech industry, a question annoyingly follows: what went awry that led to the initiation of insolvency proceedings? We will comprehend this in today's blog.  Massive Expenditure on Advertising The company's aggressive expansion plan and financial ignorance were highlighted. It ventured into foreign countries without studying demand and competition. This was costly and a failure. The company threw money at the wall on useless advertisements. Byju did not conduct cost-benefit analyses for major sponsorships and celebrity endorsements. Instead, they looked for sponsorships and deals. This was significant because poor financial decisions reduced revenue and increased debt. They were spending too much, which left them with less cash and higher costs to run the business. Looking at t...

L&T is one of India's largest and most diversified companies; it performs various activities in a very diverse number of areas and sectors, thereby making this company a very energetic and important one. The major focus areas are on engineering, construction, manufacturing, and technology. So why on earth would a construction company buy a technology company, especially when it does not match the company's main business? Did you know that L&T had no intention of acquiring Mindtree? So, how and why did it finally decide to buy a technology company? These will form the crux of our discussion with this case. Read more Case Studies at  Corporate Chronicals L&T Problem L&T had enough cash on its balance sheet with over US$2 billion of free cash flow in 2019. It was expecting another US$1.5 billion of such ready cash in 2020. All that the company wanted to do was to use this surplus cash on share buyback from the market. There was, however, no such approval of SEBI ...