The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday said it has searched the Bengaluru-located office and residential premises of Edtech major BYJU's and its CEO and co-founder Raveendran Byju and seized "incriminating" documents and digital data as part of a foreign exchange violation probe.
A total of three premises, two business and one residential, including that of the registered company - Think & Learn Pvt Ltd - were raided under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), it said.
The federal financial investigation agency said in a statement it has seized various "incriminating documents and digital data".
Who is Raveendran Byju?
Raveendran Byju is the founder of edutech start-up Byju's. Raveendran is a former teacher who turned into an entrepreneur.
After completing his B.Tech from the Government College of Engineering, Kannur, he joined a multinational shipping company as a service engineer.
Byju would help students prepare for entrance exams like the common entrance exam (CAT). He took the CAT himself in 2003 and scored a perfect score despite not studying enough for the test.
Raveendran progressed from teaching a few friends to teaching hundreds of students in large auditoriums and via satellite communication.
In 2011, he founded Byju's with his wife, Divya Gokulnath, who he met while she was a student in his exam preparation class.
He founded Think & Learn in the same year to provide online lessons before releasing the Byju's app in 2015. Byju Raveendran received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Startup category) in 2018.
Byju's operates on a freemium model and prepares students for national exams such as IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, and IAS, as well as international exams such as GRE and GMAT. Byju's purchased the Indian cricket team jersey rights in July of 2019.
By July 2022, the app had been downloaded more than 150 million times, and on average, its users spent 71 minutes on the app every day.
