Edtech in India is competitive. The big players in this space are spending millions of dollars trying to overtake each other - BYJU'S is burning through billions to ensure that they continue to hold the throne, and other edtech unicorns like Unacademy and Vedantu are vying for the remaining market share. And yet, this hyper-competitive environment can be a challenge to navigate:Unacademy and Lido Learning have both laid off hundreds of employees recently, to control burn and probably move towards profitability. So it's definitely a treacherous landscape,and should be a very difficult industry to find success in, given how many players are already dominating the market. And yet, seemingly out of nowhere, there's been a new entrant - an edtech startup that has surprised everybody with their speed, growth,and popularity. And now, they're all set to become a unicorn, less than 2 years after incorporation.This is the story of PhysicsWallah, a startup that began as a one-man Youtube Channel in a small town in Uttar Pradesh and is now set to disrupt India's entire edtech space, coming up right after this. When Alakh Pandey was in school, he wanted to attend an IIT. And he was a good student, but because of a lack of financial support, ultimately this dream just wasn't realistic or achievable.His family had to sell their home just so that he could attend an engineering college. Money was tight, so Alakh started teaching young engineering aspirants in his free time, to make a bit of extra cash. And he was good at it too! But more importantly, he realized that this was something he enjoyed! He liked teaching! His customer base at this early point in Alakh's entrepreneurial journey were 9th standard through 12th standard students - many of them were preparing for exams like JEE and NEET, and so after completing his graduation, Alakh started doing this full-time,but at a certain point, he realized that
the impact he was having was relatively small-conducting in-person sessions with these students wasn't efficient, which is why, in 2014,he started a YouTube channel, to publish and preserve and distribute his teachings. Now remember, 2014 was way before India's edtech revolution - teaching online just wasn't considered a serious choice of profession. In fact, this was even before Jio - before the affordable mobile internet that enabled people to watch countless videos on their mobile devices without worrying about running out of data - so YouTube as a career, understandably, wasn't something that anybody took seriously at this point, and edtech was still a very nascent market, and yet, Alakh decided to go ahead with this idea of his. He started his channel on the 28th of January of 2014, and began uploading videos. Now, in the first couple of years, like many YouTube channels, Alakh was reliant upon his video's ad revenue, but by 2019, he'd begun to realize that this might actually be bigger than just YouTube - he'd crossed a million subscribers in March of 2019, and startups like Unacademy and Byju's were beginning to become household names. Alakh started hearing from his students that they wanted more from him too - YouTube videos were great, but a proper platform, an app would be even better. So, that's what they did - Alakh and his new co-founder Prateek Maheshwari launched the Physics Wallah app, which they'd spent a year building - Alakh's subscriber-base would not surprisingly give this app the hug of death, causing it to crash on the first day because of overuse - it was extremely popular and well-received! Within the first week of the app going live, it'd been downloaded 300,000 times. Then, the following month, in June, Alakh and Prateek registered Physics Wallah Private Limited - they were finally official.Today, Physics Wallah as a network of YouTube channels with more than 10 million subscribers - upwards of 5 lakh people are using their app every single day, and according to The Ken, the startup, now rebranded to PW earned between 300-400 crore rupees in revenue in the financial year of 2021 - they're neck and neck with Unacademy's revenue of Rs 380.8 crore in that same time period. And that's impressive in its own right, but then we need to factor in PW's marketing spend: it was 0 for that time 300-400 period. All of their marketing was organically created by their content and word-of-mouth. So - PW is doing well. They are competitive, they're impressive, they're popular, but how did they grow so quickly?! Two years ago they didn't even have an app! They were just a YouTube channel. Well, one explanation is their pricing. See, companies like Byju's and Unacademy have always targeted the top 10-15% of the market - these are parents of students who are comfortable paying a lot for premium, online courses, and especially during the pandemic, this was money that they felt justified in spending - these are parents who send their kids to the best offline schools, so it would make sense to enroll them in the best online schools while offline schools are shut down.But there are plenty of people living in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India who simply can't afford such an expensive course - they can't afford Unacademy, but they can afford PW. PW's JEE course only costs 3,500 rupees. Alakh's philosophy here is so simple, yet genius - BYJU'S and Unacademy have targeted the top 10-15% of the market, so PW has the entire rest of the market to capitalize on, that's 85-90%, which is a massive opportunity. So, that's one thing that PW has going for it. But of course, that's just one part of the equation it, Alakh Pandey. Like Byju Raveendran at BYJU'S, Alakh Pandey is thought of as an authority, a voice and personality that students can trust and rely on. Remember how I said that PW spent nothing on marketing in the financial year of 2021? Well, one of the biggest reasons for this is that PW's own students, Alakh's pupils, do the marketing themselves. 94% of PW's website and app traffic are organic the platform is reaching millions of people via word-of-mouth, which means that PW's CAC, that's customer acquisition cost, is extremely low. They have started to spend a bit on marketing in the financial year of 2022, for example they're running 2 ads right now on Meta, that's across Facebook and Instagram.Now one thing that sets PW apart from other Ed-tech players like Byjus, unacademy, and vedantu is the amount of money they have raised. As we all know, last two years have been amazing for Indian startups in terms of raising money, as a result of which all Their competitors, on the other hand, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars,which makes it easy for them to take an aggressive approach by offering very compelling salaries, and this is something PW currently can't compete with - they might be able to hold out for a little while, but there's always a chance of their teachers being out-offered by big players. PW though, is now preparing itself for this Here's Alakh's take on all of this: "If they (rivals) are sitting on $400 million, then we also need to show that we have the money. Sometimes these bigger companies put too much money on the table. It becomes difficult for tutors to resist." As a result, PW is now in talks to raise a $100M funding round, which is certainly gonna open a lot of doors for the company. So there's no doubt that PW's future is gonna be exciting - after many years.
Congratulations ❤️
Our love physics wallaw write name in 101 unicorn startup list in INDIA.
Popular YouTube Channel Physics Wallah, led by Alakh Pandey, enters the unicorn club after raising $100 million funding.
He started a YouTube Channel (Physics Wallah) back in 2016 with just a phone & a blackboard. He also rejected 40 cr offer from Unacademy to teach on its platform and now runs an edtech company worth a billion dollars. 🔥
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