PhysicsWallah Aims to Inspire Young Minds with School Outreach Initiative

Microsoft understood in the 1980s and 90s that "catching 'em young" was the ideal approach to create a lifetime preference for its products in customers, and that this would help the company become a dominating force in the software business.

PhysicsWallah's Strategic Shift: From Test Prep to Educational Institutions

This led to the launch of many programs that gave schools donated or heavily reduced software, which many students went on to utilize in their personal and professional life. The outcome is well known to you.

PhysicsWallah (PW), a company that started in the test-prep market before moving into the skilling market, wants to achieve a similar goal with its educational institutions.

That an edtech business that thrives on an asset-light strategy is shifting toward the capital-intensive and archaic (pun intended) methods of conventional education may seem strange at first.

But if you examine more closely, you'll see that the decision made was rational. PW is able to affect pupils at a much earlier age and is bringing itself closer to its intended client base by opening schools.

It also means an income stream that is entirely independent of the whims of test-prep student rankings.

PW's Expansion: Gurugram and Varanasi Welcomes PW Gurukulam

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures, which has made investments in the edtech sector, states that "early association with students will give access to a captive audience for its primary business, tech preparation."

"Catching students early may be the strategy for PW and there is no harm in leveraging the goodwill that the company has built till date."

As school is where people "spend 20% of their lifetime" and "shape 80%" of what lies ahead, Imran Rashid, Chief Business Officer of PW, concurs that integrating learners sooner in the learning cycle may have a far greater impact.

The Noida-based educational technology company opened its first PW Gurukulam School in Gurugram last month, and it is shortly scheduled to open a second one in Varanasi.

Four hundred kids will be enrolled in the first batch of the Central Board of Secondary Education Board (CBSE) affiliated Gurugram school. 300 students will be admitted to the Varanasi school, which offers day scholar and residential alternatives.

states Rashid "The first time we thought about schools was over a year ago,". The edtech firm was founded in 2020, and its school-integrated programs had already helped it collaborate with over 2,000 schools, which gave it even more confidence.

Rashid Statement "It's very natural for us because we [already] operate in the offline ecosystem, and schools are an integral part of education, primarily offline,"