Alakh Pandey, CEO and co-founder of Physics Wallah (PW) which currently, is India’s only profitable EdTech company, started with just a phone camera, a whiteboard and a YouTube channel.
Today, he is a breakout star and his startup raised 10 crores in Venture Capital funding, becoming India’s youngest unicorn EdTech in 2022.
PW became the centre of attraction in the Test Prep Market by imparting good quality JEE and NEET coaching at very reasonable rates and most of the content was absolutely free until 2020.
What Is Brewing In Physics Wallah?
PW is on a relentless expansion spree. They announced their plans to hire more than a thousand people in the upcoming months. Intending to transition into an everything-edtech, PW has started offering preparatory courses for defence, banking, and civil services exams, among others. They are also tying up with schools under its Vidyapeeth School Centre Program.
In an interview with a reporter from The Ken, a Bangalore-based Indian news platform, Alakh Pandey said that they have hired around one thousand people in the last three months alone.
However, the push to become more than the NEET and JEE specialist identity is actually costing PW.
Also Read: Reactions From Students On 8 Ad Hoc Teachers Being Removed From Ramjas College, DU
Why Are Things Unstable At Physics Wallah?
In April this year, three teachers, namely, Tarun Kumar, Manish Dubey and Sarvesh Dixit, resigned from the platform over what they had called differences with Alakh Pandey. They then launched their own YouTube channel, called Sankalp Bharat.
The twist in the story is that the accusation against these teachers, that they left to work with a rival platform, Adda24/7, also turned out to be true as Sankalp Bharat is owned by Adda24/7’s owner. Moreover, Sankalp has already garnered 240,000 mobile app downloads and nearly 500,000 YouTube subscribers. It also dropped its prices to a large extent to give tough competition to PW.
These teachers were among the oldest employees of PW and two of them were also handling the management of its offline centres. Thus, they know the platform dangerously well, including all its weaknesses and all its strengths.
The company fired more than 100 employees in November, after performance reviews. After all these resignations and firings, PW laid bare the company’s financials, assuring employees of growth and saying that these exits wouldn’t matter.
Adding on, students enrolled in PW’s offline centres have also reported issues, complaining that classes were not being scheduled on time, teaching was poor, and that the centres were empty. The viewership of PW’s main YouTube channel has also dropped post these disruptions.
Doubtless of the fact that despite all these instances of bad publicity and other problems, there is hypergrowth in PW.
What Did The Investors Say?
However, during the company’s ongoing expansion spree, investors are asking it to slow down a little bit. One of the competitors told The Ken, “Their revenue may be shown as much higher but it is not so much from their own business. Physics Wallah is taking at least 51% stake in other companies so that it can show their revenues as its own.”
There is a fear that as the company is trying to expand its business by being on a spree, it might lose its core speciality of NEET and JEE coaching.
How will this turn out to be? Only time will tell.
Image Credits: Google Images
Feature image designed by Saudamini Seth
Sources: Business Today, The Hindu, Spotify podcast
Find the blogger: Unusha Ahmad
This post is tagged under: Physics Wallah, PW, Alakh Pandey, Sankalp, Sankalp Bharat, EdTech, Vidyapeeth School Centre Program, NEET, JEE, Tarun Kumar, Manish Dubey, Sarvesh Dixit, Adda247
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