Highly-valued Indian edtech firm Byju's seeks to raise $250 million pre-IPO (initial public offering) capital for its subsidiary firm Aakash Educational Institute. 

The Byju Raveendran-led company acquired the three-decade-old education centre Aakash Educational Service in 2021 by spending $950 million. 

According to a Bloomberg report, Aakash will issue convertible notes to bag the entire investment. The pre-IPO round for the educational centre is expected to help Byju to tackle its fund crunch as its fundraising efforts are getting delayed over the due diligence process. The Byju Raveendran-led start-up, which suffered a huge loss after witnessing a boom during the pandemic period, is currently in talks with lenders regarding the renegotiation of a $1.2 billion loan. 

The edtech decacorn released its audit report last year, where a mammoth loss of Rs 4,588 crore had been reported. The company decided to trim down five per cent of its 50,000-strong bandwidth, which led to a job cut of 2,500 employees. 

The company also faced multiple other controversies. Raveendran was summoned by the child rights body National Commission For Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) over the malpractice conducted by the company's sales team. Citing a media report, which carried the experiences of some of the parents, who got deceived by the practises, NCPCR said, "As the Commission has come across a news article wherein it has been pointed out that the sales team of BYJU'S is indulging in malpractices to lure parents to buy their courses for their children. It has also been mentioned in the news report that some customers have also claimed that they were exploited and deceived, and had put their savings and futures in jeopardy." 

The statutory body also accused the edtech firm of threatening the parents and kids to ruin their future if they differed to buy the courses of the firm.