Byju’s chief financial officer (CFO) Ajay Goel has exited from the company simply after serving the company for six months. Yeah, isn’t that shocking? But let’s face the reality that Goel has resigned from the firm as he will be going back to his earlier company Vedanta. For the unversed, Vedanta has announced a huge demerger plan that splits its business into six distinct companies.
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Goel’s exit from Byju’s comes at an important time when the company is yet to file its results for FY22 (2021-22). Not just that, Byju’s is also facing issues from its lenders with regard to a billion-dollar loan in the background of the company attempting to raise fresh funds so that the operations keep going smoothly.
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Byju’s said it has made more appointments in its finance function, with Pradip Kanakia as senior adviser and Nitin Golani, presently the president-finance, taking the lead as India CFO.
“I thank the founders and colleagues at Byju’s for helping me assemble the FY22 audit in three months. I appreciate the support received during a short but impactful stint at Byju’s,” Goel said.
He will make the move from the company after completing all the official formalities of the FY22 audit.
Golani had earlier served as the chief strategy officer at Aakash Education. He had an important role to perform in Byju’s $1 billion acquisition of Aakash in 2021 and transitioned into an operating role at Aakash post-acquisition.
“I am committed to ensuring that Byju’s growth is robust and sustainable. My endeavour now is to maximise shareholder value by optimising financial performance,” Golani said.
Goel is not the first one to quit Byju’s who has sent shocking waves in the industry. In the past also, Byju’s previous CFO PV Rao quit in December 2021 and Goel was appointed only 16 months in April 2023 after Rao left the company.
Goel was earlier the group deputy CFO of Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Resources. Before his stint at Vedanta, Goel had also worked with Diageo, GE (General Electric), Coca-Cola, and Nestle.
Since he took the lead at Byju’s, Goel has worked broadly towards putting systems and compliance in place at Byju’s. One of the important moves during his term was the exit of Deloitte as auditor. BDO is presently taking charge of performing auditing for Byju’s and is anticipated to sign off on its FY22 numbers soon.
For the unversed, Byju’s is still working on its FY22 results to be filed with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA). As per rules, private companies are supposed to file their annual results with the MCA by September of the same year. However, Byju’s is still lagging behind the dates due to several chaotic decisions made in the company.
Byju’s, which was ranked among the most valued startups of India in 2020 and 2021 had to climb down from the success ladder when it started facing many issues in early 2022 with respect to accounting, mass layoffs, and alleged wrong selling of courses. It has been almost the end of 2023 now and the company is still not getting back to terms of stability.