Edtech company PhysicsWallah Ltd’s listing is one of the sector’s most telling turnarounds. It’s a business that is rising amongst many that didn’t. PhysicsWallah is entering the public market with a valuation of Rs 31,170 crore, while the industry’s former poster child, BYJU’S, faces insolvency proceedings and regulatory action. On the eve of PhysicsWallah’s biggest show, Byju’s issued a media statement over the fund siphoning allegations.
But before we delve into comparing the fortunes of two edtech giants of India, let’s start from where it all began.
COVID turned out to be both a boon and a bane for India’s Edtech market, which saw India’s mammoth coaching industry go online. Between 2020 and 2022, edtech apps became a household name, and venture capital poured in at a record pace.
But within two years, as physical schools reopened and digital fatigue set in, user engagement plateaued, funding dried up, and valuations were recalibrated to more realistic levels. As a result, the ‘Zoom classrooms’ were shifted to a hybrid learning ecosystem. According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Grant Thornton Bharat, India’s edtech market was valued at Rs. 64,875 crore in 2024 and projected to grow to Rs 2,50,850 crore by 2030.
What’s driving these valuations? The demand emerges from K-12 students, where over 25 crore children were enrolled in FY22, as per PIB. Another ecosystem is higher education, with 1,000+ universities and 45,000 colleges, as per a report by NITI Aayog. Then comes the test preparation ecosystem, which is running an entire business of its own. Although estimates of the India test-preparation market diverge, most place it in the multi-billion-dollar range today, with IMARC Group pegging the growth to $17.40 billion by 2033, all thanks to the big giant, edtech, entering the space.
PhysicsWallah was born
A year after Byju’s launch in 2015, Alakh Pandey’s PhysicsWallah became the face of the new era – profitable, Hindi-first, and affordable.
Pandey, a college dropout from a financially constrained family in Prayagraj, built the company from a whiteboard in a cramped room into a listed platform today, through free YouTube content, which now has 13.9 million subscribers. While rivals pushed high-priced subscriptions, his free, relatable approach helped the brand scale into a unicorn by 2022, expanding into 1,000+ PW Pathshalas and diversifying into IIT, NEET, school prep, defence and government job courses—now priced between Rs 2,999 and Rs 31,999.
A tale of two models
The acquisition spree
Numbers suggest that, even as PhysicsWallah maintained cost discipline, Byju’s journey was that of a high-burn expansion. Between 2015 and 2022, Byju’s raised over $5.8 billion, the most in India’s edtech history. Its valuation skyrocketed from $1 billion in 2018 to a dizzying $22 billion in 2022, as per a report by TechCrunch. Flush with cash, Byju’s went on an acquisition spree, buying Aakash Educational Services for close to $1 billion, WhiteHat Jr for $300 million, along with Great Learning, Epic, Osmo, Toppr, and others.
Over the years, PhysicsWallah raised funding twice – nearly Rs 900 crore in 2022 and approximately Rs 1,862 crore in 2024. PhysicsWallah, too, has made a few acquisitions down the line, the largest being its Rs 500 crore, three-year deal to buy a 50% stake in Kerala-based Xylem Learning, strengthening its presence in South India, as per TOI. In 2025, it also picked up a 40% stake in Sarrthi IAS at a Rs 250-crore valuation, expanding its UPSC portfolio, as per Inc42. PW additionally acquired UAE-based Knowledge Planet, though the deal value was not disclosed.
The spending frenzy
By FY22, Byju’s was spending across every cost head. Its employee expenses accounted for 30% of its total expenses at Rs 3,552 crore, as per news reports. Byju’s spent Rs 4,144 crore on advertising and promotions, investing in big celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan and Lionel Messi, Indian jersey and IPL sponsorships. It was simple on paper. Byju’s essentially spent Rs 2.73 for every Re 1 earned, as per Entracker, recording Rs 5,014 crore in revenue and Rs 8,245 crore in losses in FY22.
PhysicsWallah was running an entirely different ballgame. Its FY25 numbers were: Rs 2,886 crore in operating revenue, Rs 3,039 crore in total income, and EBITDA turned positive at Rs 193 crore. As a result, the FY25 EBITDA margin came in at 6.7% vs a negative EBITDA margin of (-)42.7% in FY24. PW spent Rs 3,264 crore in total, or Rs 1.13 for every Re 1 earned, as per Entracker. Its employee expenses were Rs 1,401 crore, advertising took Rs 276 crore, which was around 10% of revenue, and direct costs were Rs 513 crore.
The Offline journey
By March 2025, PhysicsWallah had established 198 physical institutions under the PW Vidyapeeth and Pathshala brands. Even after purchasing Aakash Educational Services, Byju’s was unable to successfully incorporate the offline model. At its height, Aakash had about 325 centres; however, as the parent company experienced financial difficulties, operations were subsequently reduced.
The diversification
Byju’s wanted to be “the Amazon of education,” diversifying into every vertical possible, K–12 learning, test prep, international curriculum, coding, and upskilling. But this blurred its identity and overstretched its teams. The company’s once laser-sharp focus on school learning gave way to a sprawling empire that tried to be everything, everywhere.
PhysicsWallah did the same, but slowly. It chose to focus on a single vertical: test preparation. For the same, the company deepened its reach into Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets, offering classes in Hindi and five vernacular languages for India’s ‘Bharat’ demographic.
Byju’s legal battles
Byju’s legal troubles have escalated through 2025, with multiple tribunals in India and abroad rejecting its key defences. The Supreme Court recently shifted a major appeal from NCLAT Chennai to Delhi amid allegations of judicial interference, and earlier, NCLT, NCLAT and the Supreme Court refused to block Aakash’s rights issue, holding that insolvency proceedings cannot restrict a solvent subsidiary’s commercial decisions. In the US, a Delaware bankruptcy court ruled that $533 million moved out of Byju’s Alpha constituted “actual fraudulent transfers,” despite the company’s claims of legitimate use. While Byju’s continues to allege collusion by lenders and auditors and threatens damage suits, courts have consistently dismissed its arguments.
In August of this year, Byju Raveendran posted a clarification to all the charges via post on LinkedIn. Raveendran sharply criticised the process, calling it “not a routine insolvency… This was a corporate raid. A hostile takeover bid by opportunistic secondary debt buyers, masquerading as lenders.” He reiterated that the loan was not due until 2026 and that the company had been current on interest payments, arguing that a “technical default” caused by delayed audit filings was used to “manufacture a crisis and accelerate the loan.” Raveendran further claimed that “no court has found me, Divya, or Riju guilty of siphoning or misusing funds” and that the promoters had infused “over $800 million of our personal funds” to keep the business afloat.
He also alleged that “thousands of emails were mysteriously deleted from company servers under the watch of an IRP,” and said the missing information was later used to trigger contempt proceedings in US courts. Calling the saga an “orchestrated takedown,” Raveendran said the founders would now pursue $2.5 billion in damages, adding that “what happened to BYJU’S can happen to anyone building something valuable.”
PhysicsWallah and Byju’s now stand at a point after which the road splits into two. While PhysicsWallah, post-entering the public market, plans to put the new funding into intensifying the offline growth and increasing its penetration, Byju’s finds itself with an uncertain future, laden with ongoing legal disputes in the US and India.