I remain CEO; Rumours of my firing greatly exaggerated: Byju to staff
The note to employees assumes significance coming as it does after Byju's shareholders (prominent investors) on Friday voted unanimously for removing founder CEO Raveendran and his family from the board
PTI
New Delhi, 24 Feb
A day after the investors of
troubled edtech firm Byju's voted for a leadership change, Byju Raveendran
penned a note to employees asserting he continues to remain CEO and management
remains unchanged, as he dubbed Friday's EGM as a "farce". Raveendran
emphasised that rumours of him being fired from Byju's "have been greatly
exaggerated and highly inaccurate".
The note to employees assumes
significance coming as it does after Byju's shareholders (prominent investors)
on Friday voted unanimously for removing founder CEO Raveendran and his family
from the board over alleged "mismanagement and failures" at what was
once India's hottest tech startup, while the company dug in its heels, calling
the voting done in absence of founders as invalid and ineffective.
In an email to employees on
Saturday, Raveendran alleged that a lot of essential rules were
"violated" at Friday's Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM). "This
means that whatever was decided in that meeting does not count, because it
didn't stick to the established rules...It is crucial for everyone to
understand the specific issues that make this EGM a farce," he wrote.
PTI has seen a copy of the email. Raveendran
said he firmly believes that the truth will inevitably prevail, despite the
"relentless trial by the media". "I am writing this letter to
you as the CEO of our company. Contrary to what you may have read in the media,
I continue to remain CEO, the management remains unchanged, and the board
remains the same," he said adding it is "business as usual" at
BYJU'S.
Outlining what he claimed were
"key discrepancies" at EGM, he reiterated that the meeting was
convened without following the proper procedure set out by the law and the
company's Articles of Association. "To pass any resolution the meeting
needs to have a proper quorum, a set of people who are mandatory. Our Articles
are clear on the quorum requiring the presence of at least one Founder
Director. Consequently any resolutions taken at the meeting are not enforceable
as per law," he said.
He also stated, "The claims
made by a small group of select minority shareholders that they have
unanimously passed the resolution in the EGM is completely wrong. Only 35 out
of 170 shareholders (representing around 45 per cent of shareholding) voted in
favour of the resolution. That in itself shows the very limited support that
this irrelevant meeting received," he said.
Founder CEO Byju Raveendran, his
wife and brother - the only three members on the company board as of now -
stayed away from the 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 tuition 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,
sources close to the investors said. However, sources close to Byju's put the
number at 47 per cent on Friday.
Prosus - one of the six investors
who had called the EGM - in a statement on Friday 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.
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