Roshan Thomas Steps Down As Group General Counsel Of Troubled BYJU’S

Embattled edtech major BYJU’S group general counsel Roshan Thomas has stepped down from his role amid the company fighting multiple legal troubles and governance hassles and the shareholders insisting on revamping the board. Thomas was associated with the startup for more than two years. Taking to LinkedIn, Thomas said that the decision to move on “comes after careful consideration of various factors”.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work alongside talented colleagues and professionals. Navigating through challenging and tumultuous situations has been both a learning experience and a privilege,” he said. Queries sent to BYJU’S on the development did not elicit any response till the time of filing of this story.

The copy would be updated on receiving a response. Thomas’ resignation comes just days after Code.org, a non profit organisation in the United States, filed a lawsuit against BYJU’S subsidiary WhiteHat Jr in the California district court for not paying required fees while continuing to use its platform.

According to media reports, the BYJU’S subsidiary entered into a partnership with Code.org in 2022 under which the former committed to paying $4 Mn over a four year period to licence the latter’s coding education platform. Meanwhile, amid demands from shareholders to revamp the board of BYJU’S so that the former can have a larger say in the operations of the edtech decacorn, cofounder and CEO Byju Raveendran reportedly urged the investors to infuse $300 Mn into the edtech startup .

Sumeru Ventures, Vitruvian Partners, BlackRock, Peak XV Partners, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, and Tiger Global are among the marquee investors in BYJU’S. On the legal front, the company also received a show cause notice from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for violating the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999 .

The ED stated that the probe was initiated on the basis of various complaints related to foreign investments and business conduct of the edtech startup..