Physics Wallah Private Limited (also known as just Physics Wallah or PW) is an Indian educational technology company headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. It was founded by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari in 2020. It became a unicorn in June 2022 after raising $100 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion.

History

Physics Wallah Private Limited, commonly known as "Physics Wallah" or "PW", was founded in 2016 as a YouTube Channel by Alakh Pandey, an educator hailing from Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Along with co-founder Prateek Maheshwari, Pandey developed an app specifically designed for students aspiring to take the National Eligibility cum Entrance Exam and Joint Entrance Exam in 2020. In addition, Physics Wallah launched courses for School Prep, JEE, NEET, GATE, SSC, UPSC, PSC, NDA, CA Foundation, CA Intermediate, CSIR NET, IIT JAM, MBA, NEET PG, and CUET.

As of January 2023, the Physics Wallah app has been downloaded more than 10 million times. Recently, the company entered the unicorn club with $100 million in funding.

Funding and financials

In June 2022, Physics Wallah became India's 101st unicorn company by raising $100 million in its maiden funding round led by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures. During the same time, PW launched its first offline center named Vidyapeeth in Kota, Rajasthan. As of January 2023, Physics Wallah runs over 45 offline centers across 60 cities such as Delhi, Bhopal, Varanasi, Noida, Lucknow, Pune, Kolkata, Siliguri, Guwahati, Malda, Patna, Ranchi and Srinaga.

Year	Revenue (In crores)	Profits/Loss (In crores)
FY 2021	24.6	6.92
FY 2022	233	98.23

Controversies

Allegation by former teachers

On March 21 2023, several prominent and established teachers at the ed-tech company alleged that their vision of the company is being disillusioned and in response started an independent YouTube channel by the name, 'Sankalp'. They said that their resignation at PW was because of the atmosphere at the company and that at the Kota centre of PW, students were not getting the quality education worth their tuition fee.

In response, a teacher of the company, Pankaj Sijairya, alleged in a video that the three ex-PW teachers – Tarun Kumar, Manish Dubey, and Sarvesh Dixit were offered INR 5 Cr each to resign from Physics Wallah and join the rival company, Adda247. The three teachers, in a video claimed that Pankaj Sijairya falsely accused them of accepting bribes from rival platform Adda247.

The company, in a statement to Business Today has addressed the controversy and called it a “distraction.”

In popular culture

A 6-episode web series named Physics Wallah on the life of Alakh Pandey and his company was released on 15 December 2022 on Amazon Mini TV. Alakh Pandey, the series' protagonist, was portrayed by Shreedhar Dubey. The series was created, directed and produced by Abhishek Dhandharia, under his production house, About Films.