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.
This story is from the Startups July 2022 edition of Entrepreneur magazine.
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This story is from the Startups July 2022 edition of Entrepreneur magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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