The guru behind the 101st Unicorn (PhysicsWallah)

When every Ed-tech is struggling to run the business, laying off employees in bulk, dying to get new funding round, and VCs like Sequoia mentioning cold winter. We have Alakh Pandey Sir, who showed how it's done by securing the most extensive Series A funding round in India worth $100 M at a $1.1B valuation within 2 years of starting the company with a positive cash flow since its inception & showing that it's not just about tech superiority and Marketing campaigns it's about the Guru (teacher).

Now that's something which we don't see more often, but how he did it has 2 aspects:

1. What's the Back story behind starting PhysicsWallah as a company.
2. What makes PW so unique in terms of Customer Acquisition as post covid lockdown, Ed-Tech startups are struggling.

Back Story - This Started like a Bollywood movie where Unacademy offered Rs 40 Crore/Month to hire Alakh, hoping our Allahabad teacher wouldn't refuse. He chose to make history rather than working at Unacademy, and that's what he did post his popularity on his YouTube channel. But when the course was launched, there wasn't any Ed-tech who didn't tease regarding the pricing of the course. In contrast, the teacher had larger aspirations. He stayed with his channel on YouTube (1.2 Billion Views) and went on to build an Ed-tech startup (2020) that had positive cash flows since its inception.

Unique Value Proposition - Brands like Unacademy, Byju's & Vedantu keep targeting the top 10% of the social chain - the parents who can afford to pay a premium for online studies.

Unacademy & Vedantu cost between 18-60K & Byjus at around 100k, which the low-income household can afford. While the courses at The PhysicsWallah charge Rs 3,500.

The strategy here isn't to prove the course at a low price but to target the larger audience (76%) who can't afford other Ed-techs while ensuring the quality isn't compromised.

The catch here is that Ed-techs intensely focus on the tech and marketing campaigns that will help them win the Ed-tech game, but as it's been proven for ages, it's always about the Guru (Teacher). Over here, Alakh was confident, and here we see the result of our 101st Unicorn.