About

Physics Wallah is an Indian multinational educational technology company headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The company was founded by Alakh Pandey in 2016 as a YouTube channel aimed at teaching the physics curriculum for the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE), National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), and CBSE board examinations. In 2020, Pandey, along with his co-founder Prateek Maheshwari, created the Physics Wallah app, which allowed students to access courses related to the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). PW became India's first Edtech company to achieve unicorn status in 2022.

As the channel began to gain more viewership, Alakh Pandey also started to post chemistry content. As of September 2024, the company is valued at around $2.8 billion. Physics Wallah confidentially filed draft papers for a $530M IPO in March 2025.

History

Physics Wallah was founded in 2016 as a YouTube channel hosted by Alakh Pandey, an educator from Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. The channel initially focused on teaching the physics curriculum for the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE). Due to Pandey's teaching style, the channel grew rapidly, reaching over 2 million followers in 2019. In 2020, Pandey, along with co-founder Prateek Maheshwari, developed the Physics Wallah app. The app was initially designed for students preparing for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), offering courses at an affordable rate. Over the next few years, Physics Wallah expanded its offerings by launching courses for other competitive exams.

As of February 2025, the Physics Wallah app had been downloaded over 10 million times on the Android Play Store. The Physics Wallah YouTube channel amassed 13.3 million subscribers during the same period. In June 2022, the company became a unicorn, valued at over $1.1 billion after its first funding round, raising $100 million from venture capital firms. PW also launched its first offline center, Vidyapeeth, in Kota, Rajasthan. By November 2023, Physics Wallah had expanded to 67 offline centers in 34 cities across India. However, in the same month, Physics Wallah laid off 150 employees, 0.8% of its workforce, citing performance reasons.

In September 2024, the company raised $210 million in funding at $2.8 billion valuation.

Acquisitions and expansions

In August 2022, Physics Wallah acquired FreeCo, a doubt-solving platform, marking it as their first acquisition. Later that year, they acquired multiple startups focused on publishing books for competitive exam preparation. They also acquired iNeuron from S. Chand Group during the same period. In 2023, Physics Wallah acquired a 50% stake in Xylem Learning, a hybrid education platform in South India. In December 2024, the Government of Andhra Pradesh and Physics Wallah signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish the University of Innovation.