Edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah is looking to acquire edtech companies operating in southern India in an attempt to increase the brand’s reach in the market, the company’s Co-founder Prateek Maheshwari told businessline.
Further, the company is also looking to acquire players with good K-12 content capabilities, and counselling to help students in college placements, among other areas.
Maheshwari noted that PhysicsWallah is keenly observing the use cases of AI tools like GPT-4 and how they can impact education.
“We see the potential of these tools to help solve problems like enabling us to do doubt-solving for a large number of students at a lower cost-point. We may probably also partner with someone in this field going ahead,” he added.
Started as JEE and NEET exam preparation company, PhysicsWallah has today expanded into a vast number of categories like government test-prep, school (K-12), post-graduate exams like GATE, and upskilling courses, among other things.
In recent months, PhysicsWallah has acquired PrepOnline, Altis Vortex, iNeuron, Knowledge Planet, and others. Following the acquisition of UAE-based Knowledge Planet, PhysicsWallah is now also expanding to MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.
Build versus buy debate
Talking about the company’s take on the build versus buy debate, Maheswari said, “We always prefer building things over buying. The market talks about the capabilities that we have bought, but there are a lot of things that we have built internally.”
He added, “We only buy if we see a time hurdle or if we see a pedagogy challenge in terms of starting a new category. For instance, to enter a category like UPSC, we had to partner with someone as it takes good six years to develop good content for UPSC preparation.”
The company has developed completely in-house content for categories like commerce, banking, and MBA exam preparation, he said.
Maheshwari also noted PhysicsWallah will hit ₹1,200 crore in revenue in FY23 and is aiming to reach ₹2,600 crore in revenue next year. However, the company’s profit margin has come down to 15-20 per cent.