Divya Gokulnath says Byju's lacks funds to hire lawyer in US: 'They say, give us a million dollars or...'

Divya Gokulnath and Byju Raveendran are co-founders of beleaguered edtech startup Byju’s. (File photo)

Divya Gokulnath, the co-founder of disgraced edtech startup Byju's, which is fighting legal battles over unpaid debts in US and Indian courts, has said that they do not have the funds to hire lawyers in the US. She also refuted allegations that she and her co-founder-CEO husband Byju Raveendran have diverted loans to their personal accounts.

In an interview with news agency ANI, Gokulnath said lawyers are demanding “millions of dollars” in fees to represent them in US courts. “If we truly had hundreds of millions of dollars, we would have had no trouble affording legal representation," she said. "I'll show you emails where they say, give us a million dollars. Lawyers are saying, 'give us a million dollars or we won't represent'. Where do I get the million dollars from? If we were sitting on $533 million, this would not be the situation, right? We would have been fighting in the courts. We would have thrown money at lawyers.... Today, in the US, judgments are passed back-to-back to us by one court. Because we don't have representation.”

Gokulnath also alleged that her husband, Raveendran, faced a “targeted campaign of intimidation and pressure tactics” aimed at isolating him and that his family, colleagues, and lawyers were threatened.

“I think indirectly that's what they're trying to say. They're saying stand-off, or maybe create a lot of reputational damage so that you say, okay, you know what, I'll stay out of this. It's not going to happen because there is something, there is the truth that binds all of us together. There is the final mission that binds all of us together,” she told ANI.