Meet PhysicsWallah CEO Alakh Pandey: Turned down Rs 75 cr salary, built company valued at over Rs 8500 cr

Raising a $100 million (around Rs 777 crore) funding, edtech startup PhysicsWallah emerged as India’s newest unicorn. Standing at a valuation of $1 billion (over Rs 8,551 crore), the company was started by a young Pandey as a YouTube channel back in 2016.

He reportedly dropped out of college and returned to Allahabad, his hometown. Pandey began his career as a 22-year-old physics teacher earning Rs 5,000 in a month. On the way to making a unicorn, he reported turned down a massive job offer with a salary of Rs 75 crore from another ed-tech firm, said to be Unacademy. The reason was to achieve a vision of bringing tools for quality education to the underprivileged.

His YouTube channel gradually emerged with a growing following and became a full-fledged ed-tech company in 2020 when he partnered with Prateek Maheshwari to found the startup. Incepted in the midst of a pandemic, PhysicsWallah has grown at an impressive rate, clocking Rs 350 crore revenue in the financial year 2022 with a reported nine-fold increase.

The platform which helps NEET and JEE aspirants prepare for entrance now has over 50 lakh downloads on Android Play Store and over 69 lakh subscribers on YouTube.

Alakh Pandey’s unicorn has a workforce of 19,000 which includes 500 teachers, 200 associate professors, 200 subject matter experts and around 100 techies. As per the company in the country’s engineering colleges, 1 out of 10 are PhysicsWallah alumnus. This number is 1 out of 6 for medical colleges, it claims.

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