Who is Alakh Pandey, the real Physics Wallah from the Amazon web series?
Amazon miniTV's new web series Physics Wallah is based on the life of 31-year-old EdTech co-founder Alakh Pandey from Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Shriidhar Dubey plays Alakh Pandey in the series. Physics Wallah is slated to release on December 15.
Have a look at the trailer here:
Who is Alakh Pandey? Alakh Pandey is the CEO and founder of EdTech unicorn platform Physics Wallah.
- The journey of Physics Wallah started for Alakh in 2014, when he dropped out of B Tech fourth year and started a YouTube channel, Physics Wallah, where he would teach simplified physics to the students.
- Born in October, 1991, Alakh Pandey's early education years were in Prayagraj itself.
- Due to financial constraints in the family, he began teaching at an early age.
- Since he was good in Science, he secured a good rank in UPSCEE, which got him admission at Harcourt Butler Technical Institute (HBTI), Kanpur.
- He enrolled in the mechaninal engineering course in the college.
- Pandey topped his college by securing 80% marks in Physics in the first year of B Tech. To fulfill his needs, he also started teaching coaching in B Tech second year. By third year, his interest in teaching increased and he wanted to explore it further.
- He was also not quite satisified with what was being taught in his college, as he felt that the academic learning as not of much use in real life. In the final year, he dropped out of college and returned home to Prayagraj.
- In 2014, he started his YouTube channel, Physics Wallah.
How Physics Wallah shot to fame: Alakh knew from the beginning that there are many students who have a thirst for knowledge and that he could teach them physics and chemistry using his own simplified methods.
- Initially, he uploaded teaching videos on Class 12 subjects in 2015/16 but it did not work out.
- Then in 2017, when videos were uploaded on topics that pertained to students of high school, his channel's subscriber base rose.
- By 2018, his channel's subcribers had crossed 50,000.
- In August 2018, he was introduced to Prateek Maheshwari, the man behind the start-up Physics Wallah.
Physics Wallah, the EdTech platform: By 2020, Physics Wallah; the app and the platform, were launched. In the first round of funding, Physics Wallah had raised $100 million.
- While academics is being taken care of by Alakh Pandey, business, finance, and everything else is taken care of by Prateek.
- Today, Physics Wallah has 500 teachers.
- The platform also has a massive populairity on social media.
Teaching still Alakh's passion: In an interview with Business Standard in June 2022, Alakh had said that teaching students was always his first passion. He has been an avid teacher since he was in Class 8.
- He said that many institutes had offered him large amounts of money for teaching on their platforms, but he stayed away from them because of the difference in his core value.
- Alakh started funding for his start-up only to expand it further.
- He also revealed that his company is gearing up to launch educational content in nine languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Malayalam.
- When asked about venturing out globally, Alakh said that at present, his focus is to solve at least 20% of India's educational problems.
Physics Wallah is based on the journey of Alakh Pandey. It drops on Amazon miniTV on December 15.