The Byju's story: What is ailing India's once booming start-up sector?

While Byju's has stumbled and may well fall, one must hope that most start-ups learn to thrive in the changed context. The economy would be much less vibrant without them, writes T N Ninan

Byju’s, the edtech business, has become a poor advertisement for India’s once booming start-up sector. That comprises over 80,000 registered entities, of which at least 70 per cent will eventually fail, while at the other end some 100 have achieved unicorn status with valuations in excess of a billion dollars. Of these, Byju’s is the biggest, splashiest, most consistently controversial, and now on a roller-coaster that could see it crash, or magically survive. The odds on the second outcome have lengthened significantly in recent weeks and months.

What used to attract attention earlier — apart from its stratospheric valuations, which peaked