Byju’s sells Tynker to CodeHS, offloads Epic! at heavy discount amid mounting financial woes

Byju’s sells Tynker to CodeHS, offloads Epic! at heavy discount amid mounting financial woes

Amid deepening financial problems, troubled edtech firm Byju’s has offloaded two of its US-based subsidiaries — coding platform Tynker and digital reading platform Epic! — at steep discounts following approval from a US bankruptcy court. The third subsidiary, educational gaming firm Osmo, is also on the block but is yet to find a buyer.

US bankruptcy judge Brendan Shannon approved the sales during a May 20 hearing, EdWeek Market Brief first reported. CodeHS, a K–12 coding education platform, acquired Tynker for just $2.2 million. Epic!, which was Byju’s second-largest acquisition after Aakash, was sold for $95 million —significantly lower than the $500 million Byju’s paid in 2021.

“Big news: CodeHS has acquired Tynker,” said Jeremy Keeshin, CEO and co-founder of CodeHS, in a LinkedIn post. “The Tynker product remains the same and as a separate platform... now with even more support.”

The sell-off comes as Byju’s parent Think & Learn Pvt Ltd faces growing operational, legal, and financial strains. The company is now under the control of a resolution professional, appointed by India’s National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), and faces insolvency.

On June 8, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) dismissed an appeal by the resolution professional that challenged an NCLT order asking the company to maintain status quo on its stake in Aakash Educational Services.

Epic! was acquired by Byju’s in 2021 for $500 million, the company’s second-biggest international bet after the nearly $1-billion Aakash deal. Osmo was bought in 2019 for over $120 million. The failure to find a buyer for Osmo underscores the shrinking appetite for edtech assets tied to the once high-flying unicorn.

Byju’s core India operations have nearly ground to a halt. Moneycontrol wrote in May that the company’s Android app had vanished from the Google Play Store, while its website had been stripped down to a basic landing page. Users with existing subscriptions are unable to access video content, while most SEO-optimised content pages have gone offline.

Sources attributed the disruption to unpaid dues to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which powers the company’s cloud infrastructure.

Once India’s most valued startup, Byju’s is battling a series of crises including delayed investor funding, legal disputes with lenders and partners, auditor resignations, and an accelerating erosion of user trust.