Indian Unicorn 101
“PhysicsWallah, an EdTech platform for engineering and medical entrance exams, has raised $100 million (around ₹777 crore) in its Series A funding round from marquee investors Westbridge and GSV Ventures, hitting a unicorn valuation in its maiden fundraise.
With this development, the firm has become India’s 101st unicorn and the first EdTech player this year to touch the coveted unicorn(valuation of over $1 billion) club, the company said in a statement.”
Becoming the 6th of 101 Indian Unicorns or, better still, 6th of 33 EdTech unicorns in the world is no mean feat. This journey begins in the oddest way possible a YouTube Channel.
Alakh Pandey Sir, the protagonist of this story, starts posting free lectures for JEE/NEET preparation free on YouTube during 2019–2020, and seeing his consistency of uploads and in-depth coverage of the topic, his content blows up. I was one of the kids who chanced upon his content on youtube and was amazed at the coverage of the topics in a freemium way.
But more than just the quality and quantity was the connection the students shared with him, his carefree attitude, breaking into songs mid-lesson, and continuous words of support and motivation. It came to the point that he himself couldn’t keep up with the expectation; the students wanted an acceleration in content upload, which seemed impossible until The Pandemic.
After the March of 2020, students were locked in their homes until almost September, when the whole EdTech Industry took over. Remote Learning was no longer an option but rather the reality. Various other platforms joined in the frenzy, most uploading short revision videos while promoting paid course content on the side. Alakh sir ignored this and kept on his path to give “Quality Content for Jee and Life” as he said once.
During this pandemic, we also saw other Indian unicorns in EdTech space, Vedantu and Unacademy, who employed a totally “innovative strategy” (sarcasm intended). They started up buying up YouTube channels that already had massive reach and also employed famous teachers with a huge student base. Among the targeted teachers was Alakh Pandey sir. On the way to making a unicorn, he reportedly turned down a massive job offer with a salary of Rs 75 crore from another ed-tech firm, said to be Unacademy.
He later, towards the end of the first wave pandemic period, started a course for upcoming batches for a meager amount of money on his very own PhysicsWallah App. The affordability and the timing all just seemed to click at once, making it a success.
Being an engineering dropout with an outstanding loan, how did Alakh overcome the hurdles? Taking a trip down memory lane, Pandey had told ET NOW, “My sister and my mother were very supportive. My sister said that ‘I’ll pay your loan, do whatever you want.’ My father was not that supportive because of his own hit-backs in life.”
His aim was precise, and it seems he has taken the next step in his dream! From one channel, one person to an organization of 19,000, which consists of 500 teachers, 200 associate professors, 200 subject matter experts, and around 100 techies. Astonishingly according to the company’s claim in the engineering colleges, 1 out of 10 is a PhysicsWallah alumnus. This number is 1 out of 6 for medical colleges.
PhysicsWallah aims to connect with 250 million+ students by 2025. The firm looks to bridge the accessibility gap by opening 20 offline coaching classrooms, aka Paathshala, across India. PhysicsWallah has established more than 20 centers across 18 cities, with more than 10,000 students enrolled for the 2022–2023 session.PhysicsWallah has developed at a rapid pace, with income reaching Rs 350 crore in the financial year 2022, a nine-fold growth. The Android Play Store now has over 50 lakh downloads and over 69 lakh YouTube subscribers for the platform that helps NEET and JEE hopefuls prepare for entrance exams.
