While India has seen a record number of startups enter the unicorn club last year, this year is no less eventful. Recently, India got its 101st unicorn, in the form of PhysicsWallah, an edtech company that raised $100 million in a maiden Series A funding from Westbridge and GSV Ventures, valuing the company at $1.1 billion. Initially, the company stayed bootstrapped for six years.
This has come at a time when some well-known edtech companies are laying off employees.
Humble Beginnings
The company was started by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari. CEO Alakh Pandey’s love for teaching had him dropping out of college in his third year to teach Physics at a Kanpur institute. In awe of his teaching methodology, the institute’s head suggested that he start his own Youtube channel, which within 5 years amassed 2 million subscribers.
In 2020 he launched the PhysicsWallah app and to gain an edge over competitors, he started charging for his courses at INR 999/-. He also rejected a package of almost INR 40 crores from a rival edutech firm and kept going with his vision of affordable education and coaching, even when his staff started waning.
Present
Today, PW as it is called, is an ed-tech giant with 6 million students, 1500 employees, and 350 crore revenue, and is now a unicorn!
It specializes in giving comprehensive lectures and sessions on YouTube, its own app, and the website for students aspiring to take National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) mains.
Besides YouTube and its app, it also runs 20 offline hybrid centers by the name Pathshala across 16 cities like Delhi, Noida, Lucknow, Patna, Pune, Jaipur, Ranchi, Bhopal, etc.
Future Plans of PhysicsWallah
The funds amassed from this round of funding will be utilized by PW for various business activities like expansion, branding, opening more offline learning centers, and developing more course offerings.
Also Read: How CommerceIQ Rose To Success & Became 12th Indian Startup Unicorn Of The Year
The company is also planning to launch educational content in 9 vernacular languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Odia, Malayalam, and Kannada. This is so as to reach every area of the country and expand to 250 million students in the next 3 years.
