09/06/2022
Unicorn Startup:
Truly amazing story:
A college dropout from Allahabad built a profitable unicorn startup: Physics Wallah. This is the amazing story of Alakh Pandey👇🏻👇🏻
Born in Allahabad, Alakh faced financial hardships since childhood.
To cover his father's medical expenses, they had to sell their house, and his mother was forced to look for a job at the age of 52.
In the face of these financial hardships, Alakh didn't give up. He started taking tuitions to earn some income for his family.
But the tuitions had a bigger impact on Alakh's life: he fell in love with teaching.
When he was in class 11th, he used to cycle a few kilometers to teach class 9th students.
In class 12th, he dreamt of becoming a maths teacher.
In his third year, he dropped out of college and began teaching physics at a coaching institute in Kanpur called Softways.
There, students loved his teaching style.
The coaching's head was impressed by this and advised Alakh to start a youtube channel so that more students could benefit from his teaching.
Thus, on January 27 2014, Physics Wallah youtube channel was born.
And then nothing happened.
Alakh wasn't convinced about online education, so he focused on offline teaching at the coaching center.
He uploaded videos occasionally, and in 3 years the channel got about 4000 subscribers.
But he got lots of feedback through the channel which convinced him of the potential of online education.
So in 2017, he decided to leave the coaching and become a full-time YouTuber.
His father was disappointed he was leaving the job, but in time Alakh managed to convince him
On Youtube, Physics Wallah's growth was meteoric.
Students loved his teaching style and the channel shot from 4k subscribers in 2017 to 2 million in 2019!
Then came covid. Students began demanding an all-in-one platform for Physics Wallah content.
So in June 2020, Alakh launched the PW app.
The first day, there was so much rush that the app crashed.
The second day, there was huge rush, and the app crashed again.
Within a week, the app had been downloaded 3 lakh times!
While edtech giants like Byjus and Unacademy had courses for lakhs of rupees, PW gave them tough competiton by selling courses starting from just Rs.999.
This irked Unacademy. They couldn’t tolerate this new competitor. So they made a 75 crore offer to Alakh.
When Alakh refused the offer, they began poaching PW's teachers by offering high salaries.
One by one, teachers left.
Rumors started spreading that PW was about to shut down.
But Alakh didn't give up.
He made a video titled: "Tum 1 Lekar Jaoge, Mai 100 Alakh Pandey Khade Kar Dunga".
It got 2 million views and reassured students that PW was alive and functioning.
Today, Physics Wallah is an edtech giant with 6 million students, 1500 employees, 350 crore revenue, and it’s profitable!
And yesterday, it became a unicorn with $100 million funding!
