PhysicsWallah's standalone revenue surges 3.4x to Rs 798 cr in FY23, net profit down to Rs 16 cr

Prateek Maheshwari and Alakh Pandey, Founders of Physicswallah

Edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah reported a 3.4 times jump in its revenue for the financial year 2022-2023, driven by increased penetration within the offline category, the company said in a statement on December 29.

The company’s total revenue in FY23 stood at Rs 798.03 crore compared to Rs 232.47 crore during the previous fiscal year. In FY21, PhysicsWallah reported Rs 24.6 crore in revenue. Physicwallah added that the revenue only pertains to its standalone business, not including revenue generated from subsidiary companies.

It clarified that the revenue from subsidiaries did not make up for a large proportion of its income and will mostly start to make a significant difference in the next financial year. In FY23, PhysicsWallah acquired about eight companies, it said in the statement.

To be sure, the company is yet to file FY23 financials with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).

While the company continued to generate positive gains, its net profit declined to Rs 16.05 crore in FY23 over Rs 97.8 crore last year, recording a fall of 84 percent.

“But these factor in non-cash expenditures of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), lease equalisation reserve (LER) and inventory provision. These provisions are not actual expenditures that the company has incurred, but rather futuristic provisions. These adjustments when made - shall become apple-to-apple with FY22 numbers. Hence, a Rs 127 crore EBITDA in FY23 compared to 134 in FY22,” clarified a company spokesperson.

The company said its total expenses grew to Rs 777 crore in FY23 (including non-cash Expenses i.e ESOP, LER and inventory provisions) from Rs 103 crore a year earlier. The employee costs grew to Rs 367.9 crore approximately (excluding ESOP costs), a nearly 9 times jump from Rs 42 crore last year.

The company said that over a third of its revenue growth came at the back of its foray into offline services. This comes at a time when most Indian edtech companies, especially those in the test prep segment, have made efforts to open offline centres to cash on the trend back to learning in a physical setup.

Physics Wallah also said that it is now looking to expand to over 120 centres through its Vidyapeeth - its offline vertical and Pathshala - its hybrid one, in the coming year, from 58 centres currently operational. It targets to onboard 2.5 lakh students by the 2024-25 academic year, up from 1.4 lakh in the academic year 2023-24.

“Our growth was significant both in the online and offline space. Our online categories grew to 2.5x in terms of student headcount from 9 lakh in FY22 to 23.5 lakh in FY23 while our offline student headcount grew to 5.5x touching 60,000 enrolments in FY23. We also continued to cement our position in the NEET/JEE space while establishing ourselves as the topmost player in other categories like UPSC, Commerce, Gate, Government One-day exam, and Skills. We will keep investing in more categories - across study abroad, PG test prep, skills, foundation,” said Prateek Maheshwari, the co-founder of PhysicsWallah.

Moreover, the company also said that its cash reserves as of March 2023 stood at Rs 750 crore as of 31st March 2023, without sharing details on the updated data as of the year ending 2023.