NCLT ISSUES NOTICE IN OPPO'S INSOLVENCY PLEA AGAINST BYJU'S

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in Bengaluru issued notice in an insolvency plea filed by mobile phone manufacturer Oppo against embattled ed-tech company Byju's.

The plea is now likely to come up for hearing again in the last week of May, as the tribunal will go on a summer break from May 3.

Apart from Oppo, two new insolvency pleas have been filed against Byju's  in the last one week. They were filed by US based publishing company McGraw Hill education and  end-to-end customer experience solutions company Cogent E-services. The addition of three pleas take the total number of insolvency pleas filed against Byju's to seven. The ed tech company is fighting an oppression and mismanagement plea filed by its investors in the NCLT.

While Cogent E-services filed its plea as early as February 2024, MCGraw Hill and Oppo filed their plea in March, however all these three pleas were registered in the NCLT in the last one week. These cases are likely to come up for hearing in the last week of May or the first week of June.

There are two kinds of creditors under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016: operational creditors (OCs), and financial creditors (FCs). While the OCs are those which provide goods and services to a business but have not been paid, FCs are those that lend money to the company.

A total of six OCs and one FC have moved the NCLT against Byju's.

Other Insolvency Pleas

Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) filed the first insolvency plea against Byju's in November 2023. The cricket board claimed that the company had defaulted on a payment of Rs 158 crore. The plea is at an advanced stage of hearing at the NCLT.

Subsequently,  France-based Teleperfomance Business Services company, Glas Trust Company (the lenders), and digital marketing firm called Surfer Technologies all filed insolvency pleas.

2024-05-02T02:53:42Z dg43tfdfdgfd