Byju’s administrator targets Raveendran’s Singapore co in battle for Aakash

Since then, GLAS Trust has dominated TLPL's committee of creditors, with a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal order noting it holds 99.41% of the voting share.

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Ownership transfer

Ajmera's notice, which has been reviewed by Mint, alleged that Beeaar, through representatives, backed amendments to AESL's articles of association (AoA) at shareholder meetings—changes that removed TLPL’s special rights and granted them to the Manipal Group, which today owns 58% in AESL. The group, led by Ranjan Pai, a Bengaluru-based billionaire with businesses in education and healthcare, backed Raveendran as an early funder of TLPL.

Such a removal of lender rights, as Mint had reported on 5 December, had raised legal and governance questions about of Beeaar's participation in AESL’s ₹250 crore rights issue and who ultimately controls, benefits from, and can deal in the shares.

Those concerns deepened when filings before the Registrar of Companies (RoC), which Mint reported on 11 December, showed that Bisy Philip, a United Arab Emirates-based businesswoman, had subscribed to about 32.2 million shares worth around ₹16.09 crore in the same rights issue—exactly matching the stake that AESL later publicly announced was held by Beeaar.

What made the Philip's participation in the rights issue curious was that she is the wife of Rajendran Vellapalath, whose name has appeared in US court filings related to some of Byju’s US assets.

That overlap raised the possibility that Beeaar's stake in AESL had been routed to Philip, a thread that features in the resolution professional’s notice.

In the notice, Ajmera has alleged that Beeaar was not recorded as a recipient of the new shares and that Philip was listed as a subscriber, which indicated that the Singapore investment vehicle of Raveendran had renounced its entitlement in her favour.

Peeling the onion