Physics Wallah To Invest INR 120 Cr In 3 Years To Bolster Tech Skilling Vertical

Edtech unicorn Physics Wallah (PW) on Friday (May 26) announced that it would invest INR 120 Cr in the next two-three years to bolster the offerings of its tech skilling vertical, PW Skills. 

The startup is aiming to invest the amount in providing quality content to learners, who would be taught by industry professionals at highly competitive prices.

Emphasising that most tech and upskilling courses in the market today are expensive, jargon-heavy, and ‘lack a focus on practical training and the teaching of basics’, PW cofounder Prateek Maheshwari said, “PW Skills aims to address the prevalent issue of inaccessibility and steep pricing of most tech and upskilling courses.”

The latest development comes weeks after PW said it would invest INR 100 Cr to scale up its UPSC vertical. Earlier this month, the startup announced the launch of 50 offline centres, branded as ‘Vidyapeeth Centers’, with an investment of about $10 Mn (over INR 80 Cr).

Founded in 2020 by Alakh Pandey and Maheshwari, PW has both an online and offline presence. It offers test preparation courses for engineering, medical, and UPSC exams. Its educational content is available in seven languages, including English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, and Gujarati. 

PW claims that its skills vertical provides a complete learning ecosystem, which ensures that learners have access to all their skilling requirements in one place. The ecosystem includes PW Virtual Lab, an experience portal, a job portal, and an online community. 

According to the company, PW Skills’ experience portal allows learners to work on end-to-end projects while also facilitating development tracking, peer-to-peer collaboration, and more.

PW Skills currently offers hybrid courses in data science, C++, Java, full-stack web development, and other tech courses at affordable prices. 

Besides the current courses it provides, PW Skills is further exploring blockchain, cybersecurity, and AR/VR-focussed courses with an aim to prepare a skilled tech workforce of 10 Lakh individuals within the next three years, said CEO of PW Skills Sudhanshu Kumar. 

Going forward, PW Skills also plans to expand into joint certification courses with top colleges, diploma courses, and technology courses in vernacular languages.

PW said that recently its skills verticals partnered with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to make skilling, reskilling, and upskilling affordable for learners.

The edtech major claims that within five months, PW Skills has already achieved a milestone of 1.5 Lakh learners. Among them, 50K are enrolled in paid batches and the remaining have benefited from the free courses, it claimed.

PW has more than 22 Mn subscribers across 39 YouTube channels as it continues to compete with edtech majors like BYJU’S, Unacademy, and Vedantu in a highly competitive and fund-starved edtech market.

Against the loss-making trend in the edtech market, PhysicsWallah reported a net profit of INR 97.8 Cr, which grew 14X year-on-year in FY22.