Byju's group general counsel Roshan Thomas resigns amid a series of top-level exits

Roshan Thomas, Group General Counsel, Byju's

Byju's group general counsel Roshan Thomas has quit the edtech company, adding to a series of senior level exits at the troubled organisation.

“After 2.5+ years as the Group General Counsel at Byju's, I am announcing the conclusion of this chapter. My decision to move on comes after careful consideration of various factors,” Thomas said in a LinkedIn post on January 1.

Thomas had joined Byju’s back in 2021 to be the legal and compliance head of the group. A NALSAR University of Law alumnus, Thomas has worked with BMR Legal, Themis Group, Lexygen and Nishith Desai Associates.

“Navigating through challenging and tumultuous situations has been both a learning experience and a privilege,” Thomas said in the LinkedIn post.

This comes after a series of senior-level exits at Byju’s, with CEO Mrinal Mohit, CFO Ajay Goel, CTO Ajit Goel, and CBO Prathyusha Agarwal leaving the company over the past few months.

In August 2023, Ananya Tripathi, the CEO of WhiteHat Jr, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Byju's, also tendered her resignation.

On January 2, upGrad announced that Asheesh Sharma, the Head of JEE & NEET at Byju's, will be joining their subsidiary company KnowledgeHut as CEO.

This also comes at a time when Byju’s, India's most-valued startup, has been under fire since the beginning of 2022 for a variety of issues, including accounting irregularities, alleged mis-selling of courses, and mass layoffs.

The company  laid off thousands of employees in the last 12 months as it battled a double blow of drying venture capital funding and slowing demand for online learning services. Since then, its investor board members have left too, citing differences with founder Byju Raveendran.