Online learning platform Physics Wallah enters unicorn club with $100 million funding

Bengaluru: Bootstrapped online education venture Physics Wallah has raised $100 million in its maiden funding round led by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures, making it the latest edtech to enter India’s unicorn club. The company is valued at $1.1 billion, the company said in a prepared statement on Tuesday. Unicorns are privately-held startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Other edtech unicorns include the likes of Byju’s, Unacademy, Eruditus, Vedantu, UpGrad and Lead School.

The startup plans to utilise the funds for business expansion, branding, opening more offline learning centres, and introducing more course offerings it said in a prepared statement.


Physics Wallah is also planning to launch educational content in nine vernacular languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Odia, Malayalam, and Kannada.The core idea behind this is to reach every corner of the country and connect with 250 million students by 2025, the startup, the company said.

“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. Our commitment remains that every dollar spent in Physics Wallah is for the greater good of learners,” Alakh Pandey, cofounder, Physics Wallah said.

Founded by Pandey and Prateek Maheshwar in 2016, Physics Wallah prepares students for competitive engineering and medical entrance examinations. The company currently claims to have over 10 million students availing of its services.

“The Indian edtech ecosystem has grown considerably over the last two years; however, recent developments have demonstrated the first-hand importance of an efficient edtech Infrastructure. Physicas Wallah creates long-tail value for learners by delivering high-quality education at a democratic price” said Sandeep Singhal, managing director, WestBridge Capital.

Physics Wallah specialises in giving comprehensive lectures and sessions on YouTube as well as distributes it through its proprietary Physics Wallah app and the website for students aspiring to take National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) mains. Besides YouTube and applications, it also runs 20 offline centers across 16 cities.

The edtetch startup currently has 1,900 employees, including 500 teachers and 90-100 tech experts. It also has 200 associate professors available to answer student queries and another 200 professionals to create exam questions and term papers.

“The company has been profitable since inception with positive cash flows and reserves,” said Pandey. “ Our revenue grew nibe -fold in the year 2021-2022 vis-a-vis 2020-2021. Our current run rate for FY 2023 is at $65 Million,” he added.

The investment comes at a time when India’s top edtech unicorns are facing a slowdown in funding and looking at ways to curb costs and increase runways. Over the past months, large edtechs including Unacademy and Vedantu have laid off employees, in a bid to extend runway.

Last month, Unacademy founder Gaurav Munjal, whose company let go over 1,000 on-roll and contractual staff recently, told employees in an email that “winter is here” and that cost-cutting would be the company’s key focus as funding would remain scarce for at least the next 12-18 months.

In the first week of June, edtech startup Udayy shut its operations, laying off around 100-120 employees on the back of a slowdown in its business post the opening up of offline schools and kindergartens. Even smaller startups such as Lido Learning and Frontrow have laid off several employees, as investors take a prudent approach towards backing startups.

Several edtech firms are presently venturing into hybrid learning models that involve both online and offline learning to combat the slowdown post pandemic and as schools opened up. Physics Wallah runs more than 20 offline centres across 18 cities with more than 10,000 students enrolled for 2022-2023 session, the company said.