Rs 8000 Crore Company! How A Tuition Teacher Alakh Pandey Launched India's 101st Unicorn Physics Wallah

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi once said that the history of New India will be written by energetic and dynamic Indian youths who will turn their failures into big success stories by utilising every opportunity, avenue, thought process and possibility that will come in their way. Alakh Pandey, the founder and owner of an Indian ed-tech company, which is estimated to be worth Rs 8000 crore today, is one such person who has scripted history by achieving great success despite coming from a very humble background.

Physics Wallah’s Journey

 
Alakh Pandey, who is also popularly referred to as Physics Wallah, began his journey in 2014 when he dropped out of B Tech. fourth year and started a YouTube channel, Physics Wallah. The idea behind starting his YouTube channel was simple – create a platform where he would teach simplified physics to the students. 

Family Background

Born in October 1991 to Satish Pandey, a private contractor, and Rajat Pandey, a teacher at Vishnu Bhagwan Public School, in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, Alakh Pandey finished his elementary education at the Bishop Johnson School. He failed to crack the IIT but attended the Harcourt Butler Technical Institute (HBTI) in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh to study Mechanical engineering. However, he dropped out of the college in his fourth year as he was too impressed with the teaching style of his faculties at his college. He has a sister, Aditi Pandey, who is employed with a software company.

Due to financial constraints, Alakh Pandey’s family had to face a lot of problems. In order to support his family, he started giving private tuition to students of various classes, from mid-section to higher secondary at a very early age. When he was in class 11th, he was earning around Rs 5000 by providing tuition. However, he soon realised that the students from ordinary families had little resources and limited access to classroom lectures.

‘Physics Wallah-Alakh Pandey’

 

This realisation and his passion for teaching later inspired him to launch his YouTube channel. His YouTube channel ‘Physics Wallah-Alakh Pndey’ was launched in 2014 to give students access to free online lessons. After launching his channel, he began streaming lectures on “physics” covering a wide range of topics.

However, he did not achieve much success. So, he decided to improve the quality of the content of his lectures and bought study materials from Kota, Rajasthan to prepare and make his lectures. His hard work yielded good results and his channel’s viewership increased significantly. His innovative and distinctive way of teaching Physics made him immensely popular and brought him millions of new students in a short span of time. Till December last year, his YouTube channel’s subscribership reached 9.25 million.’

Launch Of Physics Wallah App

 

In the year 2018, Alakh Pandey launched an app named Physics Wallah, which attempts to reach out to talented young students from rural backgrounds. Around 90% of the information provided on the app is free to read. For the students’ preparation, there are live classrooms, lecture-by-lecture notes, video assignments, video lectures, and exam series. A group of educators assist Physics Wallah. Additionally, there are free seminars. Additionally, for the other courses that PW provides, such as JEE NEET, UPSC, etc, the course content is readily available for download from Google Play, allowing students to learn and conquer their physics phobia. PW is now operating in several cities, including Patna, Pune, Lucknow, New Delhi, Varanasi, etc. His major earning also comes from his YouTube channels – JEE Wallah, Military Wallah, Competition Wallah, and NCERT Wallah besides his flagship channel ‘Physics Wallah.

For Alakh, teaching was always his first passion and through his ventures, he aims to provide affordable quality education to every deserving student irrespective of his or her family or financial background.

Web Series ‘Physics Wallah’

 

Inspired by his success, a web series ‘Physics Wallah’ was streamed on Amazon miniTV in which Shreedhar Dubey played his character.

Alakh Pandey's Net Worth

 

He achieved a major milestone in 2022 when his educational technology platform became a unicorn in June 2022 after raising USD 100 million at a valuation of USD 1.1 billion. His personal net worth is estimated to be around R 96.8 crore.