PhysicsWallah Becomes India's First Profitable Edtech Unicorn

PhysicsWallah, also known as PW, is the most recent Indian startup to join the unicorn club. Westbridge and GSV Ventures contributed $100 million in a Series A round, valuing the company at $1.1 billion. In startup parlance, a unicorn is a company worth more than one billion dollars. This year, PhysicsWallah is the first edtech company to reach this milestone. Overall, it is the 101st company in India to receive this honour. The eight-year-old company joins the ranks of edtech unicorns such as Byju's, Vedantu, Eruditus, Vedantu, and Upgrad.

It intends to use the new funds for business expansion, branding, the opening of additional learning centres, and the introduction of new course offerings. It also intends to release educational content in nine Indian languages: Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Odia, Malayalam, and Kannada.

“This latest development will help us further our vision and implement new initiatives to augment the learning journeys of students, thereby enabling them to reach new heights in their careers,” said Alakh Pandey, founder and CEO of PhysicsWallah.

Alakh Pandey created the YouTube channel 'PhysicsWallah' in 2014. Due to his popularity among students, Unacademy reportedly offered him a position as a teacher with a salary of 40 crore per year. He declined in order to build a profitable, bootstrapped business out of PhysicsWallah. The PhysicsWallah currently operates over 20 centres in 18 cities, with over 10,000 students enrolled for the 2022-23 academic year. It has 5.2 million downloads on Google Play and 6.9 million YouTube subscribers.