Westbridge and GSV Ventures have invested $100 million in PhysicsWallah in a Series A investment.
PhysicsWallah, commonly known as PW, an edtech business, is the newest Indian startup to join the unicorn club. At a valuation of $1.1 billion, the firm has raised $100 million in a Series A round from Westbridge and GSV Ventures.
In startup jargon, a unicorn is a company worth more than one billion dollars. This year, PhysicsWallah is the first edtech company to reach this milestone. In total, it is India’s 101st corporation to receive this honour.
The eight-year-old company joins the likes of Byju’s, Vedantu, Eruditus, Vedantu, and Upgrad on the list of edtech unicorns. It intends to use the new funds to expand its business, market itself, build more learning centres, and expand its course offerings. It also plans to release educational content in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Odia, Malayalam, and Kannada, among other Indian languages.
“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 had started ‘PhysicsWallah’ as a YouTube channel back in 2014. Looking at his popularity among students, Unacademy reportedly offered to hire him as a teacher too with a salary of ₹40 crore per annum. He turned it down to build a bootstrapped, profitable business out of PhysicsWallah.
The PhysicsWallah currently has more than 20 centres across 18 cities with more than 10,000 students enrolled for 2022-23 academic year. It has 5.2 million downloads on its app on Google PlayStore and 6.9 million subscribers on YouTube.
Thanks to its extensive, dynamic, and engaging instructional content, the company boasts that over 10,000 of its students passed competitive exams like NEET and JEE in 2020 and 2021.
It has 1,900 employees, including 500 teachers, 90-100 IT experts, 200 associate professors who answer student questions, and 200 professionals who write exam questions and term papers.
“The company has been profitable since inception with positive cash flows and reserves. Our revenue grew 9-fold in the year 2021-22 vis-a-vis 2020-21. Our current run rate for FY23 is at $65 million,” Pandey added.
Notably, PhysicWallah is now the only profitable edtech unicorn, having been self-funded from the start. On June 7, the company raised its first external round.
The news comes at a time when experts are predicting a long fundraising winter, which will stifle the flow of funds into the startup ecosystem. Edtech, according to numerous experts Business Insider spoke with, will be one of the worst-affected areas now that students have returned to school.
