Edtech platform Physics Wallah (PW) is seeing a sharp uptick in the number of female students enrolling for its upskilling courses. As per PW, there has been a jump of 162.5% to 21,000 female students in 2023-24, from 8,000 in 2022-23, in the upskilling courses. The total enrolments in these two years stood at about 0.1 million.
PW Skills offers nearly two dozen new-age courses such as data analytics, data science, UI/UX design, DevOps and cloud computing, BFSI (banking, financial services & insurance), and programming languages (such as C++, Java, Python), full-stack development, etc. Almost all these courses have seen a sharp jump in female student enrolments.
For instance, in the data analytics course, the overall female student enrolments stood at 48% in 2023-24 followed by 41% in DevOps and cloud computing, 36% in BFSI. The data shows that women aged 23-28 are mostly opting for these courses. PW Skills said that a majority of female students enrolling for upskilling courses belong to tier-2 and 3 cities in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka.
Ashish Sharma, chief business officer at PW Skills, said the democratisation of skill development is empowering more women to enhance their career prospects. “There are significant gaps in the skilling market from the employability point of view. These gaps include hard and soft skill, and new-age tech disconnects. Plus, there’s a traditional focus on degrees over practical skills. Our goal is to bridge these gaps by making upskilling courses accessible and feasible for everyone. The increase in female students choosing advanced and skills-based courses highlights our commitment to the democratisation of education,” he said.
At the moment, PW Skills caters to class 12 pass-outs, graduating students and working professionals. Over the past year, the vertical has improved the employability of students with over 12,000 learners have advanced in their careers, over 3,000 college students have secured placements, and more than 9,000 graduates and working professionals have found their first jobs or received salary hikes. A lot of female students have been recruited by top-tier companies such as Uber, Oracle, Adobe, Flipkart, Paytm and multinational banks.
Started as a YouTube channel in 2014, PW became a unicorn in 2022. In October 2022, the start-up forayed into upskilling vertical with an aim to prepare students for the new-age jobs.