The homegrown ed-tech company, Byju’s will be taking over as the sponsors of the Indian cricket team from Chinese mobile manufacturer Oppo. Byju’s is a Bengaluru based online tutorial firm which has grown its market over the years into many folds. It is a tripartite agreement between BCCI, Oppo & Byju’s and will see the women’s, U-19 as well as the men’s cricket team wearing the jersey with Byju’s logo. The deal period will begin from 5 September 2019 until 31 March 2022 as South Africa will Tour India. As per the deal, Oppo was paying BCCI Rs 4.61 crore per bilateral match and Rs 1.56 crore for an ICC event game and the same amount will be continued with Byju’s, thus BCCI not losing any money.
Should more homegrown companies be the official sponsors in every upcoming league or national teams? As OPPO became a household name in just five years of operations in India but this only surged the Chinese economy.
It’s good that finally an Indian company is sponsoring Indian Cricket Team!
But, this got me thinking that how startups are burning Investor money! A company with $75 million revenue is valued at more than a billion and is receiving hundreds of million in funding.
The revenue which you’re quoting is for the Financial year 2018. As of April 2019, BYJU’s claims to have crossed ₹200 crore in monthly revenue. It is estimating a revenue of over ₹3,000 crore by the end of this year and with fundings from Tencent and prominent investors that include Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Naspers, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Aarin Capital the company is now valued at over $5 billion. Not to forget the company was only started in 2015 and in the span of 4 years if they can afford sponsoring BCCI then they definitely have a ROI plan. Cricket being a religion in India there couldn’t be a better way for the company to become a part of every household in India.
BYJU was actually founded in 2011 and the app was launched in 2015. BYJU’s app has definitely seen phenomenal growth in the last 4 years and it’s good to see them replace Oppo on the Indian team jersey as sponsors.
However, except initial investment from Aarin Capital in 2013, nearly $785 million investment is funded by investors outside India including US, China, Belgium, South Africa, Canada - Sequoia Capital India, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Tencent, Sofina, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Brussels-based family office Verlinvest, development finance institution IFC, Napsters Ventures, CPPIB and General Atlantic. In this globalization era, there is nothing wrong in this but it will be interesting to analyze the dynamics of BYJUs growth beneficiaries where major chunk of the current ownership seems to be held by foreign investors.
A company with $75 million revenue is valued at more than a billion and is receiving hundreds of million in funding. 