It has been two years since Alakh Pandey—who built a cult following by teaching students online for free before co-founding edtech Physics Wallah Pvt. Ltd, or PW—stepped into a (virtual) classroom to teach.

That’s because the 31-year-old star tutor shifted his focus to the edtech’s management on his co-founder Prateek Maheshwari’s insistence. “He said, ‘till the time you’re teaching, you will not be able to scale.’ We would still be doing just NEET-JEEThe National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) MainNEET is an all-India competitive exam for admission into medical colleges. JEE is an all-India entrance exam for entry to the prestigious IIT engineering colleges in India. coaching had I continued. I feel like teaching. Maybe, once things stabilise,” Pandey’s voice trailed off during one-and-a-half-hour-long Zoom interaction.

The instability that Pandey referred to is partly of his own making. PW embarked on an unbridled expansion spreeThe KenPhysics Wallah’s bootstrapped challenge to Unacademy’s test-prep prowess after raising an impressive Series A round in June 2022. Venture-capital firms Westbridge Capital and GSV Ventures led the US$100-million round catapulting the edtech into the unicorn club.

Known for offering end-to-end preparation courses for medical and engineering entrance exams at affordable prices, PW has now dipped its toes into various test-prep segments—from defence to banking to civil services. It’s going even beyond this market with short-term skilling courses and tie-ups with schools under its Vidyapeeth School Centre programme. Besides, of course, opening offline centres across the country and abroad.

A series of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is propelling PW’s hyper-growth. Over the past year, it has acquired test-prep platforms such as Preponline and NCERT-book publisher Altis Vortex (AV Publication). It has formed a joint venture with Utkarsh Classes & Edutech Pvt. Ltd, one of the leading edtechs in the civil-services-and-government-exam-preparation market.

PW’s pace has been rather hurried, Pandey and Maheshwari admitted that much while speaking to The Ken. At a time when other edtechs are laying people off, PW is hiring. Aggressively. “We’ve hired around 1,000 people in [the last] three months,” said Pandey who did most of the talking during the interview. The company has close to 8,000 employees.