The valuation is $2.8 billion.
Source: Know
Author |Penny
Recently, India edtech startup Physics Wallah (PW) announced that it has closed a $210 million Series B funding round, raising its valuation to $2.8 billion. On September 26, the edtech company was soliciting proposals from investment bankers for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2025.
此轮融资由Hornbill Capital领投，光速创投（Lightspeed Venture Partners）、GSV 和 WestBridge 参投。 Physics Wallah 首席执行官 Alakh Pandey 表示，公司将利用这笔资金扩大业务并进行收购。
Founded in 2020 by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, Physics Wallah provides K12 students with online and offline learning services in 105 cities across India, as well as exam preparation courses, skills training courses and study abroad courses for various exams.
TechCrunch reported that at present, Physics Wallah has 180 offline physical training centers, hires teachers and artificial intelligence to solve students' problems, and has developed an app called AI Guru to help students solve problems in learning materials, and has trained artificial intelligence with its own data.
According to media reports, Physics Wallah expects revenue of 24 billion India rupees (about 2.011 billion yuan) in fiscal year 2024.
(左为Physics Wall联合创始人 Prateek Maheshwari ,右为创始人、首席执行官Alakh Pandey)
01
Revenue will increase threefold in fiscal 2023, and it plans to go public in 2025
Physics Wallah is ushering in a highlight moment, and after the B round of financing, it is planning to go public in 2025.
Physics Wall 由 Alakh Pandey 和 Prateek Maheshwari 于 2020 年创立,是印度众多教育技术公司之一.
Alakh Pandey started teaching at an early age, teaching younger students in the sixth grade and later becoming an influencer teacher on YouTube. Recently, Hurun India released the first India Under 35 Entrepreneur List, which includes 150 young India entrepreneurs, and Alakh Pandey, founder and CEO of Physics Wallah, was selected.
Prateek Maheshwari was behind Physics Wallah becoming India's most lucrative unicorn. With more than 17 years of experience founding technology-based companies, he brings a wealth of expertise and technical prowess to the education industry. Prateek Maheshwari has played a key role in strategically guiding the organization since Physics Wallah's inception and has facilitated several acquisitions of Physics Wallah.
Physics Wallah was originally founded in 2014 as a YouTube channel to publish educational content and later formed a company. Physics Wallah uses a freemium business model to offer courses for free on YouTube. For those students who want more features like homework and tests, they can opt for a paid service.
Physics Wallah disclosed that it operates technology-enabled offline hybrid centers for K12 students in 105 cities in India, and its products also include exam preparation courses for various exams, skills training departments and study abroad courses.
（Physics Wallah的课程）
Today, the company has reached more than 46 million students through various channels. Approximately 9,500 hours of educational content are produced each week, with more than 30 million app downloads and 5.5 million paying users.
According to Outlook Business, Physics Wallah's revenue for FY2023 was 7.72 billion India rupees, a 3x increase from the previous year. The financial figures for FY2024 have not yet been filed with the Registrar of Companies, which expects revenue of Rs.24 billion India for FY2024. For the fiscal year ending March 2024, its revenue increased by 250% year-over-year.
Alakh Pandey said that the financing will be used to expand the business and make acquisitions. Last year, Physics Wallah acquired a 50% stake in Xylem Learning, an education technology company based in Kerala, southern India.
Physics Wallah also revealed that it plans to hire another 1,500-2,000 middle management talents by the end of March 2025. These hires will be conducted for their online and offline operations, also known as PW Vidyapeeth Centers.
02
Will targeting the mass market be successful?
Although Physics Wallah seems to be in the limelight, the overall capital market is slightly sluggish, especially BYJU'S, another unicorn company in India, is in financial trouble, and many people are beginning to be skeptical about the development of Physics Wallah.
Back in 2022, Physics Wallah entered the unicorn club with $100 million in investments from WestBridge and GSV, bringing it to a valuation of $1.1 billion. Competitors at the time included BYJU'S, Unacademy, Vedantu, and others.
Among them, Byju, which was once valued at a whopping $22 billion. Today, BYJU'S has come to the brink of collapse in recent years due to aggressive acquisitions, high marketing spending, and mismanagement, and faces multiple bankruptcy proceedings in India.
As funding decreases, their losses increase in cost, with startups such as BYJU'S and Unacademy both laying off more than 1,000 employees in the past two years.
Commenting on some of the failures in India's edtech sector, Alakh Pandey said: "Everyone is talking about profit or financing, but no one is focusing on what really matters – content and impact. If you can do the content and impact well, everything else will fall into place. Physics Wallah is all about focusing on what is provided and what students are working on. ”
India is the world's most populous country and has one of the largest education markets in the world, with about 250 million students attending school each year.
Currently, Physics Wallah offers free and paid courses for various academic exams in India. The company aims to stand out by offering courses that cost less than $50 (about 350 yuan) on average, so that more children in poor areas can receive education.
"We have been criticized for trying too much, however, what investors appreciate most about us is that our business is not targeting the top 5% of students in India, but the remaining 80% of the student group, which is the mass market, a market that is not yet saturated." Maheshwari, co-founder of Physics Wallah, said. He also said that he will also double down on his investment in PW's various segments following the success of those segments.
Maheshwari believes: "Despite the failures, the market is still growing. ”
Regarding the IPO, Alakh Pandey emphasized: "IPO is what we will do. We want the company to have strong management capabilities, and we are working to this end by forming an independent board of directors...... It doesn't matter to us when the IPO takes place, we run the company as compliantly as a public company. ”
END
Author: Penny
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