“What is the colour of a parrot?” a teacher asked six-year-old Alakh Pandey. He replied, “orange.” “I was a lost child, always daydreaming. I had zero talent,” Pandey says. The poor exam results were a testimony to that. In nursery, he scored a B minus and the tradition continued as he failed in science in the ninth grade.
The tables have turned, and how. Twenty-six years later, Pandey, now 33, has found the correct answers to millions of questions from students across the country. Evidence: Physics Wallah, the edtech company founded by him, is valued at $2.8 billion as of September 2024.
It’s literally been a rags to riches story. Born in a lower middle class family in Prayagraj, Pandey had to start do home tutoring when he was in Class 8 to support his family, which met with a financial crisis and had to move from a 4BHK house to a tiny one. “My teaching journey did not start because of passion, but out of financial necessity,” he says.
Though he wasn’t a good student, he prepared well for the classes he took as he had by then understood the financial situation of his family. He also felt a sense of responsibility as his parents had put him in Bishop Johnson School and College. “We didn’t have that much money, but still, my parents wanted me to study in the best school possible. They used to take loans from relatives to make me study,” he says.
Pandey has a rather unique reason for his success as a tutor. His only passion in school was acting and he dreamt of becoming an actor. He believes this skill helped him become a better teacher. “Teaching is also like acting. Conveying emotion is acting, conveying concept is teaching,” he says.
Whatever the reasons are, his love affair with teaching continued. He dropped out of BTech in Kanpur as he just “couldn’t understand the concept of rote learning” and resumed his teaching journey. His sister, of course, had to pay the price as she took on the responsibility of repaying the loan he had taken for studying engineering.
Within two to three years, his teaching career flourished as he was earning a lot. Pandey says he became popular in the Prayagraj locality he was staying in for his style of teaching, his tattoos and clothes that had Physics concepts painted on them.
It took another three years for him to try and reach out to more students, and YouTube was the best way to do it. In 2014, he started a YouTube (YT) channel, Physics Wallah, while also continuing with offline coaching. “But I could not manage both, so I decided to stop offline coaching and focus on YT, even though YT hardly had 5,000 students (subscribers) and just a few likes.”
Pandey continued teaching Physics and a little bit of chemistry on YT with just one whiteboard, a mobile, halogen light, no mic and no fan. “Everyday I uploaded videos. I even tried speaking in English, did funny voice mimicry, used props, but nothing worked”. After a long battle of one year, the channel reached 10,000 subscribers. Today, Physics Wallah has 186 channels (December 31, 2024) and 187 offline/hybrid centers (September 30, 2024).
In 2016, Jio changed everything for Pandey. Children from small towns and villages could afford data. His channel picked up. After one and a half years, Pandey started getting Rs 8,000 a month from YT, which increased to Rs 40,000 within months. Then another magic happened. “YouTube’s algorithm made my old videos come on top. And children loved the way I taught, cracked jokes etc,” he says. Within four months, he started getting Rs 4 lakh a month. Pandey was still not satisfied with the reach and impact. He wanted to expand and build an app that would cover tests, content, homework and chat. But he was very clear that he would charge the bare minimum.
“I didn’t have money myself for IIT coaching. So, I wanted to create equal opportunity for all,” he says. He went on his channel and announced that he would soon create an app. He had to struggle for two and a half years as it was difficult to find like-minded people who would understand his wish to offer classes at minimum cost.
Finally, he met his co-founder Prateek Maheshwari in 2020 and the app was launched with a course price of Rs 1,000, while his competitors were selling one full-year course for around Rs 20,000. Within four-five days, around 35,000 children bought the course. However, live classes faced a glitch.
The app crashed for the first five days whenever he started live classes. “It broke my heart, and I decided I would refund the money. Prateek asked me to give him a few days to help him with a refund,” he says. Meanwhile, Pandey continued sharing recorded classes and on the 7th or 8th day, he again went live. This time, it worked. And, within no time, live classes became a super hit.
The company was launched officially in 2020 and Maheshwari joined as a co-founder after a year or so. Pandey and Maheshwari also launched a NEET batch for Rs 3,500 annual charge. Within weeks, around 70,000 candidates bought the course.
The company went for its first fundraising in June 2022. It became the first Indian startup to achieve unicorn status in a Series A round, after raising $100 million from WestBridge and GSV Ventures, at a valuation of $1.1 billion. “WestBridge’s Sandeep (Singhal) asked us what valuation we were looking at. We didn’t know anything about valuation. But we said unicorn valuation and Sandeep agreed,” he recalls.
The IPO-bound startup reported a 161% increase in revenue to Rs 1,940 crore in FY24 from Rs 744 crore in FY23, according to its financial statement filed with the Registrar of Companies. Pandey meanwhile has gone back to his first love — teaching — after a gap of three and a half years. Even today, he prepares for many hours every day for these classes, while Maheshwari continues to oversee tech, hiring and other aspects.
