Physics Wallah (PW) claims to clock a total revenue of Rs 798 crore, up 3.4 times from the previous year. Total student enrollment touched 24 lakhs for the financial year 2023, as per the official announcement from the company.
The company claims that its revenue surged 3.4 times in FY23 from the previous fiscal year driven by increased penetration within the offline category, it added.
The platform claims to have taught close to 24 lakh students across all exam categories (excluding acquisitions) up from more than 9 lakh students last year. The company saw a major growth in student numbers coming from expansion in multiple new exam categories, skilling and an impressive surge in offline student enrolments.
Also, PW claims to have raised $100 million during the financial year 2023 and took a lead in consolidating the space through its M and A spree and entered into as much as 8 partnerships in FY23, all profitable in themselves. The inorganic revenue of the order of Rs 500 crore shall reflect in the FY24 financials through these M&A made in FY23, as mentioned in the statement.
PW also claims to report an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before income, tax, depreciation and amortisation) of Rs. 127 crore in FY23 (adjusted for ESOP costs, LER and one-time inventory provisioning), which stood at INR 134 crore in FY22.
“Our commitment is clear: We’re investing to reshape India’s education. Education uplifts societies and drives economic growth. We will continue to plough back all the free cash flows generated by the business back into it to serve more students – touch more lives – transform more families,” Alakh Pandey, founder, CEO, PW, said.
Further, Physics Wallah is looking to expand to more than 120 centres through its Vidyapeeth (Offline) and Pathshala (Hybrid) centres in the coming year, from 58 centres currently operational, and aims to teach 2.5 Lakh students by 2024-25 academic year, up from 1.4 Lakh in the academic year 2023-24, as outlined in the release.
PW’s also claims that its cash reserves also improved significantly to almost Rs 750 crore as of 31st March 2023. PW’s total expenses grew to Rs 777 crore in FY23 (including non-cash Expenses i.e ESOP, LER & Inventory provisions) from Rs. 103 crore a year earlier. The employee costs grew to Rs 406 crore (Including ESOP benefits, which was nil in FY22) from Rs 42 crore last year. However, the marketing costs remained as a single-digit percentage of revenue highlighting a strong moat of community for the company in acquiring new students, it added.
“Our growth was significant both in the online and offline space. Our online categories grew to 2.5x in terms of students headcount from 9 lakh in FY22 to 23.5 lakh in FY23 while our offline student headcount grew to 5.5x touching 60,000 enrolments in FY23. We also continued to cement our position in the NEET/JEE space while establishing ourselves as the topmost player in other categories like UPSC, Commerce, Gate, Government One-day exam, and Skills. We will keep investing in more categories – across study abroad, PG test prep, skills, foundation – applying a similar formula of community, quality, and affordability, to remain in a hyper-growth phase. We are in no hurry to compromise growth for achieving a steady-state margin profile,” Prateek Maheshwari, co-founder, PW, said.