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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
The edtech company is expanding rapidly as fear of future job markets push a growing number of parents to enrol their children for coding classes
Editor's note: An accident changed the course of life for the Patnaiks and their five-year-old son Venkat. In April 2018, Kuldeep, Pramila and their son Venkat were driving back to their hometown of Balangir in Odisha from Kolkata, West Bengal, a distance of about 750 km, when they met with an accident. Although they escaped unscathed, it shook the couple to their core. To this day, if Kuldeep sees a road accident, it unsettles him for days. It came as a stark reminder to the fragility of life. It also sent the couple on an urgent quest to help their son discover his skills, which might come handy in an uncertain future. For the next year or so, they did it on a war footing. There wasn’t a sport, activity or summer camp that Venkat did not attend. He played cricket, football and badminton, started learning music, even enrolled for swimming classes. But none of these kept him hooked for long. He sang well, says Kuldeep, a banker turned digital marketer and stay-at-home-dad, but then left it. After a couple of sessions …
Co-founders Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari made Physics Wallah the company it is today by keeping their focus on the digital media, test-prep business. With fresh funds at its disposal after the IPO, it is making the mistake of believing it is an education company.
For one of the world’s largest and shrewdest investors to entirely skip putting money in the country is a sign of how quickly the nature of the Indian startup ecosystem has changed.
As the company weighs a move into test prep ahead of a 2027 IPO, the question is whether entering a category from which upGrad has consciously stayed away so far makes sense.
