INTRODUCTION

The Unicorn Startup Physics Wallah is the most revolutionary in the Indian unicorn startup ecosystem as for today, this startup is a strong player in the Indian Ed-Tech Space. It was founded by Alakh Pandey who is a college dropout. He started his journey from 2014 when he started his YouTube channel. Hindustan Times posted on December 18,2023 that PW have 80 YouTube channels in 8 vernacular languages, it has 10 millions paid students on its PW app and PW providing Quality Education to more than 36 millions of students in India. PW also started its offline centres named ‘Vidyapeeth Centre’, 2023 they added 50 more offline centres which currently in total are 64 centres in different cities of India and it was told to The Economic Times by the co-founder of PW Prateek Maheshwari that they are aiming to expand to 100 centres in India.

Alakh Pandey belongs to the lower middle class family of Allahabad, it was his childhood dream to go to IIT, but his family’s financial condition didn’t gave him this opportunity and he didn’t get proper couching. His parents had sale out their house for the education of Alakh Pandey and his sister. After the completion of 12^th class he took admission in Harcourt Butler Technical University, Kanpur for Mechanical Engineering. To support his family financially he started giving tuition classes to small kids since 8^th standard, even during his college time he taught engineering aspirants. He was very interested in his studies since childhood but he didn’t like the way of teaching of the professors in HBTU, that’s the reason he dropout from the college in his third year. After leaving the college he joined a local couching institute and started giving full time teaching, firstly he started this job because of the financial pressure but later he started enjoying this, developed interest in teaching and realised that teaching was his real passion.

Alakh Pandey thought, in India many parents are not able to afford the cost of quality education for their children as Alakh Pandey had gone through the same. So, he wanted to provide his teaching to as many children as possible. He started offline coaching but there was a problem he could only provide his teaching to a limited batch of students. At this point, Alakh Pandey’s friend suggested him, why don’t he start a YouTube channel with this he would be able to teach thousands of students at a time. He felt this idea wonderful, so with the investment of ₹30000 he bought a smartphone, tripod and a whiteboard. The videos were recorded at night, at the same one-room dwelling. That room had no fans nor proper lights and housed his family.  

On 28January,2014  he started his YouTube channel named Physics Wallah. But it was very hard period for him, from 2014 to the end of 2017 as he only got 10000 subscribers on his channel. But later students started to understand his lectures and also liked his teaching style, on March 2019 he got 1million subscribers. He was doing well with his YouTube channel but he realised that if he wanted to prepared the students for their exams, he had to take a step ahead from YouTube. As he kept touching higher peaks, his lifestyle did not change. He started upgrading his teaching equipment so that his created content would be higher quality. That’s all where he splurged.

On 18May,2020 he launched his App Physics Wallah with the association of Indian Entrepreneur Prateek Maheshwari the co-founder of PW. Physics Wallah app got boomed after its launched due to within one week more than three lakhs people had download it and on fourth day more than 35 thousands students enrolled themselves with the courses of PW app. Because of too many traffic in the beginning of the days this app was crashing again and again. Other Ed-Tech companies had thought, PW would be the biggest competitor for them in the future. So one of the ed-tech company gave Alakh Pandey a offer of 40 crores salary, so that this competition end there, but Alakh Pandey rejected that offer. But later again the same company came with another offer of 75 crores for the 10% Equity of PW, this offer also rejected by Alakh Pandey.

These companies failed to corner PW, they played another strategy inviting PW teachers into their company by offering crores of rupees to them, they thought by this strategy PW would be end. Alakh Pandey did not accept this he came live on his YouTube channel Physics Wallah and challenged these companies by saying, “If you take one teacher from me I will stand thousand Alakh Pandey” , after this statement many PW students supported PW by trolling those companies. To save their reputation those ed-tech companies moved back.

Companies in the test-prep space, such as Unacademy, Vedantu and Toppr, were losing money north of Rs. 100 cr. Per month. PW chalked up a formula that balanced the books and led to profit.

The secret was a freemium model that turned free YouTube content into a gateway for premium courses. Free lessons on YouTube acted as the ‘hook’. Eager learners got a taste of PW’s teaching style. High-quality content kept them coming back for more. The real magic, however, was in the transition, moving from free viewers to paid subscribers. PW’s offerings were attractive to students. They balanced affordability with quality, making top-notch education accessible to all.

Was ed-tech companies like BYJU’s and Unacademy were dominating the market then how a small startup  PW place in the market?

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