Majority of Byju’s shareholders vote for removing founders

Majority of Byju's shareholders on Friday voted unanimously for removing founder CEO Byju Raveendran and his family from the board over alleged "mismanagement and failures" at what was once India's hottest tech startup, but the company dug in its heels, calling the voting done in absence of founders as invalid and ineffective.

Founder CEO Raveendran Byju, his wife and brother - the only three members on company board as of now - stayed away from the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) called by a group of six investors, who collectively hold more than 32 per cent in Think & Learn (T&L), the firm that operates online tution platform Byju's. At the end, more than 60 per cent of the shareholders voted in favour of all the seven resolutions, which included removing the current management, reconfiguration of the board and a third party forensic investigation into acquisitions done by the company.

Prosus - one of the six investors who had called the EGM - in a statement said "shareholders unanimously passed all resolutions put forward for vote. "These included a request for the resolution of the outstanding governance, financial mismanagement and compliance issues at Byju's; the reconstitution of the board of directors, so that it is no longer controlled by the founder of T&L; and a change of leadership of the company." Sources with direct knowledge of the matter said the EGM was to start at 0930 hours on Friday but was delayed for almost an hour as around 200 people, some of them Byju's employees, sought to join the virtual meet.