The Fall of India’s Hot Startup Is Wiping Out US Debtholders (1)

On Wall Street, it was an easy sell: The most valuable startup in India’s history, a tech company with Silicon Valley cachet, a charismatic founder and visions of dominating the online-education business that seemed sure to be one of the post-pandemic’s next big things.

More importantly, Think & Learn Pvt — more widely known as Byju’s — was willing to pay handsomely to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars in the US just as the world’s central banks were holding interest rates at next to nothing.

So when JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley went to line up buyers ...