Deloitte sought two key changes to Byju’s FY21 financials: Report

India’s most valued unicorn, Byju’s, made two key changes to its revenue before releasing the audited accounts for FY21. The changes were sought by its official audit firm, Deloitte, a report by Economic Times (ET) stated.

The first change was the nature of revenue recognition. Earlier, if a two-year course was sold by Byju’s, the whole payment was counted in the year of sale. However, Deloitte asked the edtech company to defer the payment over the period, the ET report said.

In the results, declared on Wednesday after a delay of over 18 months, Byju’s recorded a revenue of Rs 2,280 crore. The loss for FY21 was at Rs 4,500 crore.

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The second change that has been made is the accounting of interest paid to partners that provide loans to customers to buy the courses. They have been moved under revenue. Earlier, they were accounted for as finance costs.

Byju’s, according to the report, provides guarantees to its partners on the loans given to customers. It is obligated to pay any instalments that have not been paid by the customer and are overdue by 75 to 90 days.

While buying a course, the customer makes a down payment and takes a loan for the rest. The down payments are collected by Byju’s parent company Think & Learn Pvt Ltd. The loan amount is settled by the company’s partners.

According to the report, due to the first change, Rs 1,56.27 crore has not been recognised as revenue and will be counted in the coming years.

In FY21, Byju’s came under the scanner of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (GSTI) on charges of alleged tax evasion. The report stated that the company paid Rs 96.17 crore as GST, Rs 27.95 crore as interest, and Rs 14.43 crore as the penalty.