The journey of Alakh Pandey—the founder of the Physics Wallah—is truly inspiring for many individuals. From poverty to prosperity, he changes his life through hard work and a strong belief by following his passion for teaching. Let’s read the journey of popular educator Alakh Pandey.
Early Life and Background
Alakh Pandey was born in 1991 in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Coming from a lower-middle-class family, he struggled with financial troubles from a very young age. Despite this, he was always passionate about education. Seeing the financial struggle, he decided to work hard and follow his passion to create a better future for himself and his family.
In his teenage years, he started tutoring younger kids to financially support his family. Eventually, he started enjoying teaching. When he was in 11th grade, Alakh started his coaching institute.
Engineering
After completing his schooling, he wanted to go to IIT but failed to clear the entrance exam. Later, he was admitted to Harcourt Butler Technical Institute (HBTI) in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh to study mechanical engineering. However, when he was in his 4th year, he dropped out and decided to follow his passion for teaching.
Carrying on with His Coaching Institute
He was truly inspired by the teaching style of his college faculties. So, after quitting his degree, he went back to Prayagraj and opened a coaching center. From his coaching institute, he was earning merely Rs 5,000 monthly.
Utilizing Digitalized Methods to Teach
However, students loved the way he taught; this made Alakh a popular and favorite teacher for many students. In his small coaching center, he was unable to teach many students. So, he decided to take advantage of the digital era and started a YouTube channel in 2016 to reach a wider audience. However, at the beginning, his videos didn’t get many views, so he decided to create tutorial videos for 10th ICSE board students. Fortunately, this helped him gain 10,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.
The Bold Step: The Launch of Physics Wallah By Alakh Pandey
In 2017, he made the decision to quit his coaching institute and completely focus on his YouTube channel. Between 2017 and 2019, his Physics Wallah channel reached from 10 thousand subscribers to 2 million subscribers.
With the growing number of subscribers, it got a little difficult for him to manage all operations. So, in 2020, he expanded the team and hired Prateek Maheshwari to operate the business. In addition to his role as co-founder of Physics Wallah, Prateek has also founded several other ventures, including Edu4All, PenPencil, Moon2Noon, and NightPanda.
The Launch of the Physics Wallah App
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, the only option for growth was through online channels. In 2020, they decided to launch the Physics Wallah application (Android & iOS). Surprisingly, their app got a lot of traffic and crashed on its first launch day.
The Road to Success: Strategic Planning and Application
The successful journey of Alakh Pandey was not easy, but his innovative ideas made his YouTube channel a well-known platform in the Edtech industry. His digital-first approach was the key to his success. When every institute was expanding offline, Physics Wallah took a bold decision to teach students online as he recognized the importance of online learning in the future. By teaching students through his YouTube channel, he was able to provide a quality education for students from villages to learn just by sitting in their homes.
Another effective strategy that helped Physics Wallah achieve success was Alakh’s focus on affordability. While other Edtech players offered courses from 15k to 30k, Physics Wallah provided the same course at around 3k to 3.5k with the best teachers.
Not just this, he also provided a free video for students who cannot afford to buy the premium courses. Instead, of investing heavily in marketing like other Edtech companies, Alakh relied on free videos to attract more and more students to his platform.
Building a Thriving Community
The success behind Physics Wallah is its engaged community. He understood the importance of engaging with his viewers, and actively responded to queries and doubts of his viewers through the comments section. As well as he also created content-based feedback. The positive feedback from students played a crucial role in growing his channel.
Future Plans
Apart from the YouTube channel, Alakh Pandey also expanded his presence into offline coaching centers and websites. As of September 2024, Alakh Pandey and Physics Wallah’s net worth is around Rs 4,500 crore. Physics Wallah has established their coaching institute offline, and in the future, he is looking ahead to open his coaching center branches in every corner of India.
Recently, he started his coaching center in Kota, where thousands of students have been admitted to prepare for competitive exams. He is also looking forward to launching its courses in numerous different regional languages like Marathi, Odia, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Bengaluru, and more. This aims to help students belonging to different regions. Alakh Pandey, popularly known as Physics Wallah, has had his life story immortalized in a web series on Amazon mini-TV.
