Physics Wallah is not only gearing to expand but also acquire. The company, which presently has a workforce that is about 15,000 strong, plans to take on 1,000 new hires for various functions, including marketing, sales, technology and business development.
According to media reports, the edtech firm is looking to merge with publishing houses and other organisations dealing with content in southern India.
As per a ToI report, the edtech unicorn has raised $210 million in a recent funding round, the largest the company has witnessed. The round was led by Hornbill Capital and saw participation by Lightspeed Venture Partners, GSV and WestBridge Capital. The company is now valued at $2.8 billion.
The edtech firm was founded by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari. What started off as a YouTube channel in 2016 was incorporated into a company four years later, in 2020.
Interestingly, the two founders hold 85 per cent of the company’s equity, and only 15 per cent is held by institutional investors, which is unusual amongst Indian unicorns that had reached a valuation of over a billion dollars.
It was in 2022 that Physics Wallah had last raised more than $100 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion. Since then, the company has managed to acquire iNeuron, PW Institute of Innovation and Xylem Learning as subsidiaries. This expansion offline resulted in a jump in employee costs and a major increase in overall expenses. However, revenue increased three-fold.
In November 2023, the company had laid off 120 employees as part of a mid-term performance evaluation. In an official media statement at the time, Satish Khengre, chief human resources officer, Physics Wallah, had clarified that the company had terminated less than 0.8 per cent of its workforce.
