A TALE OF DETERMINATION, RESILIENCE, COURAGE, SHEER WILL AND FOCUS: PW BECOMES INDIA'S SIXTH EDTECH UNICORN

alakh pandey is not your quintessential physics teacher. He starts off his classes by singing "Hum honge kamiyaab" for maximum hard-core motivation. Pandey, a physics fanatic at heart, sports tattoos of Pi, E=mc2 and the face of Albert Einstein etched on his arms. Contrary to popular belief, Alakh Pandey is not an IIT graduate. He dropped out of an engineering college in Kanpur and decided to return to his native town of Allahabad (renamed Prayagraj) Uttar Pradesh and joined a coaching institute, where students loved his coaching style.

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HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Alakh Pandey's relationship with teaching started when he had to shift to a slum and live out of a rented house. He started giving tuitions to 4th standard students while being a 6th standard student himself. Pandey saved enough money to buy a cycle that he used to ride to other places for taking home tuition. Being an 11th-grade student, he went for a demo class in a coaching institute. The outcome of the demo class was not expected by anyone. The students at the end of the class were clapping for Alakh and his unique style of teaching.

Following these events, Pandey believed that he was on the right path and he had to take up teaching as his profession. Pandey taught for four years in brick and mortar coaching. The owner of the coaching witnessing his growth congratulated him and said that he would be teaching 5000-6000 students 10 years down the line.

However, Pandey wanted to expand his reach further and gradually came on YouTube with his will to reach more students in 2016. He posted full educational content for one year starting from 2016 itself and got a respectable 10,000 subscribers.

In January of 2018, a friend of his advised him to monetize his YouTube account and he received INR8000 and decided to leave the brick-and-mortar coaching to focus completely on YouTube in an attempt to reach more students.

He named the YouTube channel as PhysicsWallah. Pandey says the name is inspired by a famous tea stall called ChaiWallah, which has its presence in Kanpur, Lucknow and Varanasi. Pandey was with his sister in Kanpur when he came across the name. When his family enquired about his plans after dropping out of college, he replied with confidence, "I'll start PhysicsWallah". Pandey even started his Facebook page with the same name.