GSV Ventures Ropes In PhysicsWallah Executive As Partner

Multi-stage venture capital firm GSV Ventures has onboarded its IPO-bound portfolio company PhysicsWallah’s executive Abhishek Mishra as partner. 

Mishra will cover GSV investments in the US and India, the VC firm said in a LinkedIn post. 

“We are thrilled to announce that Abhishek Mishra has joined GSV Ventures as our partner based in India. We have known and admired Abhishek since our first interactions with him in 2022 when he was at GSV’s leading portfolio company PhysicsWallah,” the post read. 

Mishra has been associated with PhysicsWallah for over four years starting January 2021. Currently, he is the chief strategy officer at the Noida-based edtech startup. 

Earlier, Mishra was the head of finance operations at the fintech unicorn Slice. The Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi alumnus had also worked with Tata Group.  

Incorporated in 2016, GSV Ventures focuses on tech startups primarily in the education and digital learning sector. The San Francisco-based VC and PE firm counts some major edtech players among its portfolio, including Coursera, Class Dojo, Degreed, Outlier, Remind, Course Hero, Master Class, among others. 

The development comes at a time when the edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah reportedly filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for an INR 4,600 Cr initial public offering (IPO) via confidential filing route last month.

However, the names of the investors who will be offloading shares during the IPO are yet to be discerned. 

India’s edtech space seems to be getting on track of revival after almost two years of funding winter. To a certain extent, the revival is led by the emergence of GenAI and its use cases in the edtech sector. 

The likes of PhysicsWallah, upGrad and Unacademy are leveraging the emerging tech to build personalised curriculum and tailored content recommendations, supporting educators in developing teaching strategies and chatbots to answer queries of students. 

The edtech unicorns upGrad and PhysicsWallah are on their way to adopt large language models  (LLMs) at various levels to enhance user experience and simplify their operations.

As per Inc42, India’s edtech sector is expected to experience remarkable growth, with the total addressable market projected to reach $29 Bn by 2030.

Besides, in notable shuffles in the VC and venture debt firms of India, Trifecta Capital onboarded its investor Saurabh Singh as partner in February. 

In the same month, sources told Inc42 that Shailesh Lakhani and Abheek Anand, two managing directors at Peak XV Partners, were set to leave the VC firm. 

In December last year, Elevation Capital roped in former Meta executive Krishna Mehra as partner to lead SaaS and AI investments for the fund.