India's newest edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah has followed Tiger Global-backed Scaler to launch an undergraduate residential engineering programme, as the company looks to double down on the upskilling segment.
The four year-residential programme in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will begin in September this year in Bengaluru, with a batch of about 100 students, Vishwa Mohan, Chief Information Officer of PhysicsWallah and President of the institute, called PhysicsWallah Institute of Innovation told Moneycontrol in an interaction.
For now, PhysicsWallah has partnered with two universities to offer undergraduate degrees, Mohan and Sudhanshu Kumar, CEO of PhysicsWallah Skills said, without giving much details. To be sure, Scaler has a partnership with BITS Pilani (Birla Institute of Technology and Science).
“We have done a collaboration with a couple of universities. We are offering a degree but that is optional. Students will be eligible to pursue a bachelor's degree in parallel with our partner premier institute,” Kumar told Moneycontrol.
“More than a degree, what we essentially want to do is have experienced faculty and industry leaders from top companies as mentors, an industry-oriented curriculum, which will help students with relevant skills. By the time you come out of IOI (Institute of Innovation), you will be ready and from day one you can be deployed in the industry,” Kumar added.
The degree qualifies individuals to explore opportunities for further education in India or abroad and makes them eligible to appear in competitive examinations, Kumar said.
Kumar and Mohan explained that the course's price point would be Rs 1.5 lakh per year, with the total fees amounting to Rs 6 lakh. To qualify, students would need to take an entrance exam. The institute will also have placement partners, including Tata IQ, Siemens, Leadsquared, SAP, Oracle, KPMG, Amazon, and others.
Kumar said that previously, PhysicsWallah Skills has placed more than 1,500 learners with an average salary of Rs 22 lakh per annum and a top salary of Rs 50 lakh per annum.
The two did not disclose how much they plan to invest in the institute or how much PhysicsWallah expects it to contribute to its overall revenue. For the next two years, PhysicsWallah expects to enroll 300-400 students. The institute has an overall capacity of 500 students. The institute will also have a hostel for accommodating students, Kumar said.
PhysicsWallah is betting big on the upskilling segment. In December last year, the company acquired iNeuron.ai, which later got spun off as PhysicsWallah Skills. In May, the company said it would invest Rs 120 crore for upskilling.
PhysicsWallah’s move to open a residential offline institute comes at a time when demand for online education has slowed for all edtechs with schools, colleges and physical tuition centres reopening. Edtech unicorns like Unacademy and Vedantu have already cautioned about slowing demand in the online space. These startups have also thus opened offline institutes even for their core business.
PhysicsWallah, founded in 2020, by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, had raised $100 million from WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures at a valuation of $1.1 billion in June last 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. Moneycontrol exclusively reported in March that the company is exploring fundraising to revalue itself at over $3 billion.
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