The Hurun India Rich List 2024 has the names of big Indian billionaires. While Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani are at number 1 and 2 in it, many new names have been added to the list of India’s youngest billionaires. One of them is Alakh Pandey, whose name was also in the news during the NEET exam controversy in the past. Alakh is the co-founder of edtech startup Physicswala and is included in the Top-10 Youngest Billionaires in Hurun’s new list. His story of rising from rags to riches is very interesting.
Childhood spent in financial difficulties
Alakh, who has entered the list of India’s Youngest Billionaires today, had a financial crisis in his childhood. His father was a construction contractor, but he was continuously incurring losses in business. When Alakh was studying in class three, half of his house in Prayagraj’s South Malaka area was sold and by the time he reached class six, his entire house was sold. Recalling that period, Alakh Pandey himself has said many times that ‘our financial condition was so bad that while studying in class eight, I started teaching tuition to children up to class five.’ His mother was a teacher in a private school, while his sister also contributed to the household expenses by teaching tuition.
4500 crore net worth at the age of 32
Regarding Physics Wallah co-founder Alakh Pandey’s net worth, according to the Hurun India Rich List 2024, 32-year-old Alakh owns assets worth Rs 4,500 crore. With such a net worth, he has been included at the 10th position in the list of top-10 youngest billionaires in the country. While the youngest billionaire in the country is Kaivalya Vohra, co-founder of quick delivery platform Zepto.
Alakh Pandey has studied from IIT Kanpur
In the initial phase, Alakh Pandey used to earn around Rs 5000 per month by teaching tuition. While teaching tuition, he also kept full focus on his studies and on the basis of hard work and ability, he took admission in IIT Kanpur and completed B.Tech. However, he continued teaching children. After completing his studies from IIT, an idea came to his mind, which changed his whole life. Actually, while teaching children, Alakh Pandey thought of creating a YouTube channel and then in the year 2017, he opened a YouTube channel named ‘Physics Wallah’ with his partner Pratik Maheshwari.
Actually, two things happened in 2017. First, cheap 4G service came to India. Second, Alakh changed his strategy. Alakh himself studied from ICSE board. He knew very well that the children studying in this board come from the affluent class and there was no special study material available for them on the internet. Alakh focused on these students and soon he started seeing good results. In 2018, Alakh received his first check of Rs 8,000 from YouTube. At this time, his channel had around 50,000 subscribers.
Students loved his videos on this channel, each of his lecture videos got lakhs of views. After this, Alakh developed a mobile app, in which students could take online coaching classes by paying a very low fee. After some time, Physics Wala’s YouTube channel got 69 lakh subscribers and 50 lakh apps were downloaded. In 2020, Physics Wala was included in the Company Act.
Even a job offer worth lakhs was rejected
When Alakh Pandey was moving forward with his idea, he also got many good job offers, in which he was offered lakhs of rupees per month. Let us tell you that Alakh Pandey got an offer of Rs 4 crore from Unacademy, but he wanted to do something different on his own, so he rejected this offer. This coaching, which was started to provide quality education to everyone in a low budget, became a well-known name among the aspirants preparing for competitive exams. His colleague Prateek Maheshwari, who is an engineering degree holder from IIT BHU, also has an important contribution in this success of Alakh Pandey.
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)