Physics Wallah: Mission to ‘Reform Education’- Persistence is the key to success, says Alakh Pandey

Physics Wallah: A 30-year-old boy from Allahabad UP who is dedicated to the cause of ‘Education Reform’ by providing an affordable and easily accessible education for millions of students in our country with very limited resources. Started the mission with a clear intention and belief that money cannot be an impediment to achieving one’s dreams, Alakh Pandey founded Physics Wallah in 2016 with a single whiteboard and YouTube Channel.

In the course of time, Physics Wallah became a mission and millions of students across the country supported it. Especially during covid, when the entire world was going through a global pandemic crisis that caused economic collapse. In order to ensure that the students’ fundamental right to quality education is not violated, we did not leave any stone unturned in developing supporting programs.

In order to achieve this, we began new batches with the help of the best teachers all across India. The batches were designed keeping the affordability of students in mind. The goal was to cover the entire course for science and engineering students at the lowest possible cost so that they would not be financially burdened. It’s not just that the courses have been made easily accessible, but we also provided top quality features like Test Series, Quizzes, Live Classes, Special Courses, etc.

Though, Pandemic has been a learning experience for most of us, while we have learnt the biggest lesson too. During last year’s pandemic, we had introduced the PW App for students pursuing IIT, JEE Main, JEE Advanced, and NEET considering the drop outs.

It was unexpected that students responded so enthusiastically that on the first day we got over 35000 registrations and downloads that the app got crashed. However, our strong technical team managed to resolve the problem.

Nonetheless, I believe that our consistent efforts and clear intention towards the goal of providing affordable quality education to the needy has made us determined to not give up and upload videos every day with the same enthusiasm.

Starting with just 1 YouTube channel alone, building a large and strong team of 850 people has definitely been a challenging journey. In the beginning, I used all the money what I earned from YouTube to build a strong team of the right people, instead of using it in luxury.  Physics Wallah Mission is completely self-funded. We have not taken any external support or investment.

I believe that people often make a mistake that when they get some good money, they use it for luxury, comfort and material needs, but I have not allowed any distraction in my life.

My vision was very clear, I was comfortable with 1 old jeans and kurta from the beginning and kept working on my goal of benefiting more and more children through Physics Wala from the earning which resulted in more than 350 Best Teachers of country working with us from all parts of the country and more than 850 personnel getting employment in Physics Walla and our network is spread all over India, be it Punjab or Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh or West Bengal.

Our future plans are to educate more and more children through the Physics Vala program. We have begun an initiative called ‘Offline Pathshala,’ it’s reach has now been established in 10 key locations, and we aim to establish 100 centers. These centers works on a two-teacher model, where one teacher addresses thousands of children at a time simultaneously, while the other is with the children in the center to answer their questions. We have also developed “24*7 Doubt Engine”. It’s an exclusive platform for students to clear their doubts anytime and from anywhere.

Since 2016, we have continuously focused on making children study in an engaging and interesting manner, in one way or another. I still remember going to an institute in Modi Nagar for an interview for a job of physics teacher, but the owner told me that you cannot become a mass teacher.

That incident really hurt me emotionally, then with the encouragement of my sister, I managed to reach masses and make my mark. I still remember having to prepare for one video lecture for seven hours.

While giving a lecture, sometimes I used to sing in the middle, sometimes I would jump, and sometimes I would wear gloves. Because keeping a class of 30-40 students engaged is in your control, but for keeping a large number of students engaged in online lectures I had to adopt various methods. Although I had to face criticism in the beginning, now it has become my identity.

Today the brand ambassador of ‘Physics Wala’ is not any celebrity but children themselves and their teachers, they are the good will ambassador of Physics Wallah.  So, I believe regardless of how many difficulties come our way, we should remain persistent. This is the only key to success.