Seems Byju’s have to face several issues related to negative marketing of the newly acquired company Whitehat Junior. WhiteHat Jr is the most publicly criticised startups in the country. The Mumbai-based coding startup WhiteHat Jr, founded by Karan Bajaj signed with edtech firm BYJU’S bought it out in a $300 million (Rs 2,223 crore),at the time of the acquisition all-cash deal in early August.

Founded in November 2018 by Karan Bajaj, ex-CEO of Discovery Networks India. Whitehat Junior has some learners in India and the US. It was also planning to expand to Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

White Hat Jr. aims to equip students as young as six with computer coding skills and teach them to build commercial-ready games, animations and apps online using the fundamentals of coding. It offers five levels of courses including beginner, intermediate, advanced, professional and applied tech, as per the website.

All I had was a PowerPoint presentation, a vision and backing from some early friends and family who tested my idea,” Bajaj told YourStory in September 2020. “With that, I presented a plan and got $1.3 million from Nexus and Omidyar without actually even registering the company.

Ever since its acquisition by Byju’s, WhiteHat Jr has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Expert says, it is smart buying and many says on the wrong buying the start-up, A question comes does the kids need to understand the coding from class Four onwards, does their mind can cope-up with the strains and there are burst into various controversies.

Summary of the transaction includes:

Just 18-month-old start-up has involved with various controversies and bring the attention of the public eye. WhiteHat Jr was valued at just $30 million in August 2019, but its valuation ballooned 10X in a year. It had also hit an impressive ARR of $150 million at the time of being acquired.

Unlike most founders who sell their companies, Karan Bajaj held over 40 percent stake in WhiteHat Jr at the time of exit, which meant he pocketed a mammoth $120 million (close to Rs 900 crore).

The deal generated record returns (10X-15X) for WhiteHat Jr’s early backers Omidyar Network India, Nexus Venture Partners, and Owl Ventures, who’d invested $10 million cumulatively just 11 months ago (September 2019).

Trouble had started brewing a month before. Heavy priced to the students ,with negative marketing tactics by the marketing professionals, WhiteHat Jr launched an advertising blitzkrieg across media, allegedly making odious claims about its product offering. The ads claimed that six-and-seven-year-olds, who’d taken coding classes on WhiteHat Jr, have built apps and websites, and even become TedX speakers.

With the aggressive ad campaign, about 15 complaints on seven WhiteHat Jr ads were filed with the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI). The company was soon instructed to pull down the ads for making dubious claims and violating ASCI’s code of conduct. Secondly, within a month of the acquisition, WhiteHat Jr had four million subscribers globally, as reported 100,000 were paid.

The education start-ups has received huge investments during Pre and Post Covid scenario, backed by various top investors across the globe. While the distance education was never respected across the globe, now with the COVID virus, most of the students and schools have adopted the distance education methodology by the adoption of e-learning platforms. Hence, Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network had invested in WhiteHat Jr and had raised just $11 million. At the same time, other education company such as, Unacademy has raised close to $200 million. Byju’s has raised $1.5 billion. Toppr has raised some $112 million. However, WhiteHat Jr has pulled in the news for all the wrong reasons, including the recent cyber hacking.

As reported many are not going to talk about how WhiteHatJr is trying to harass people and silence their voices by taking down posts, getting accounts banned and even go to the extend of filing a defamation lawsuit worth of 2.6 million USD?

The Delhi high court had issued an ad-interim order to Pradeep Poonia in a $2.6 million defamation case filed by coding startup WhiteHat Jr founder Karan Bajaj. Pradeep had claimed the startup used “copyright protection” to take down critical feedback of the firm or its products, among other allegations.

The HC in its order has asked Poonia to take down specific tweets regarding the numbers of teachers, alleging WhiteHat Jr. to be a ‘ponzi’ scheme, and other tweets,as per the report. It also restrained him from hacking messages on the firm’s personal communication platform Slack and sharing chats between WhiteHat Jr. and its employees on his YouTube channel. The case will be next heard on January 6, 2021.

The defamation notice also raised concerns over Poonia accusing WhiteHat Jr. for “murdering” an “imaginary” 12-year-old child named ‘Wolf Gupta‘ – who in one of WhiteHat’s ads had landed a lucrative job at Google.