PhysicsWallah confidentially filed for an IPO, looking to raise up to $500 million. If successful, it would be India’s first pure-play edtech listing on the stock market.
This makes PW the latest company to take the confidential route, following Tata Play, OYO, Swiggy, and Credila Financial Services.
Confidential filings allow companies to keep financials and business data under wraps until they finalize the public offering.
The deets: the IPO will include both a fresh issue of shares and a stake sale by existing investors.
The company was last valued at $3.7 billion. Financially, PhysicsWallah has seen rapid revenue growth but widening losses:
- Revenue surged 160% YoY to ₹1,940 crore in FY24.
- Net loss widened to ₹1,131 crore.
Why it matters: Until 2014, Alakh Pandey was on a regular gig training teenagers for IIT-JEE in a popular coaching-center in India. That year, he kicked off a basic YouTube channel, explaining concepts and solving questions. As YouTube got popular, thanks to mobile internet boom in India, his channel grew like wildfire.
So Pandey expanded PhysicsWallah beyond YouTube — mostly after 2019, when he launched their first web portal, followed by a mobile-app with 20M+ downloads, a 13M+ subscriber YouTube channel, and 60+ offline coaching centers across 30+ cities.
Edtech hasn’t had the smoothest ride in recent years—Byju’s is struggling, Unacademy pivoted hard, and Vedantu is laying low. PW’s IPO will be a key test of whether investors still believe in the sector.
Zoom out: India’s online education market is expected to hit $10 billion by 2027. If PW pulls this off, it will be a litmus test for the future of the entire sector.
More on IPOs,
Pine Labs, the Indian fintech firm, may go public in the second half of 2025 with a $1 billion offering. If successful, the listing would be India’s second-largest fintech public offering, following Paytm’s $2.5 billion debut in 2021.
