India’s newest edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah expects its FY23 (2022-23) revenue to top Rs 1,200 crore as the company continues to witness high demand for its courses, including its core online offerings, according to its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Alakh Pandey.
“Contrary to what people are saying (about demand for online learning solutions slowing), our online course subscriptions have continued to grow 2-2.5x this year, and we opened offline to expand not to transition,” said Pandey, during CNN News18’s Bits to Billions show.
“Our marketing spend wasn’t a lot before, it has now started going up a bit, but I think we will still close the year with a 40-45 percent EBITDA (operating profit) margin and our revenues have gone up massively. It’s already crossing Rs 350 crore in the first quarter only and revenues are going to be huge - at least Rs 1,000 or Rs 1,200 crore by the end of this year,” Pandey added.
PhysicsWallah is also making forays into one-on-one doubt solving, Pandey said. As of now, the company is going less aggressive with ‘Saarthi,’ it’s one-on-one doubt-solving program as PhysicsWallah still needs to create awareness around the pricing for it, he added.
“The fee for Saarthi is Rs 8,000 and kids said it was expensive. They were comparing it with PhysicsWallah’s courses, which start at Rs 4,000,” Pandey said.
“So we had to explain kids as to why that is more expensive, we need to keep dedicated teachers for it. But it is doing good, picking up well, kids are also liking it but we haven’t given it a massive push,” Pandey added.
Interestingly, the company’s expansion to doubt-solving comes at a time when Unacademy had suspended contracts of its doubt-solving educators for six months, in a bid to cut costs, Moneycontrol had reported earlier this month.
Pandey also said that PhysicsWallah will launch commerce on its platform and will make forays into local language tuitions. While the commerce domain will be for class 11 and 12 students, the company would start local language in four languages--Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati and one more southern language--Pandey said.
PhysicsWallah will also target the post-graduate courses, starting with post-engineering and post-medical courses, Pandey said. He also said that the company’s two co-founders want to solve problems around jobs and could make forays into job-guarantee segment.
PhysicsWallah’s comments on profitability and the company’s expansion plans come at a time when edtech companies in India have struggled with softening demand post the pandemic amid reopening of schools, colleges and physical tuition centers.
Many edtech companies, including some of the largest like Byju’s and Unacademy, have pivoted to offline tuition centers, and are aggressively working towards profitability, unlike last year, when many companies were focusing on growth. Edtech companies are also cutting their costs by laying off in masses and are going slow on non-core expansion. Moneycontrol had reported how India’s edtech companies were scrambling for solutions post the pandemic.
PhysicsWallah, founded in 2020, by Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, had raised $100 million from WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures at a valuation of $1.1 billion in June this year. The company had then said that it will use the funds for business expansion, branding, opening more offline learning centres, and introducing more course offerings.
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