Aniket PujariOn its earnings call on Friday, the Noida-based firm laid out plans to push deeper into the K-12 segment, arguing that earlier intervention in a student’s learning journey will translate into stronger academic outcomes.
While K-12 currently contributes less than 1% of revenue, top executives said they believe school education could eventually overtake the company’s core test-preparation vertical, which today accounts for 97% of revenue.
“For now, the K-12 push is unlikely to move the needle on revenues,” said Prateek Boob, co-founder of recently listed PhysicsWallah. “But in the longer run, this will become a meaningful contributor to Ebitda. Five years from now, K-12 will be a larger business than test preparation.”
Why schools now
Management argued that coaching often begins too late to fundamentally change outcomes. “By the time students enter Class 11, the damage is already done,” Boob said, pointing to structural gaps in school-level preparation for engineering and medical entrance exams.
Edtech players, most notably Byju’s, had previously tried to monetize K–12 students through after-school education. That model ran into trouble, leaving Byju’s largely inactive today.
PhysicsWallah initially entered K-12 through smaller online offerings and its early-learning brand Curious Junior in 2023, but is now making a deeper push into mainstream school education through physical schools.
Boob added on the earnings call that comparable models in markets such as China suggest K-12 education can eventually generate higher revenues than test preparation.
A deeper foray into K-12 is one of four key focus areas for the company, alongside offline expansion, acquisitions and artificial intelligence. PhysicsWallah has earmarked ₹400 crore for building its K–12 platform through Pen Pencil, its school management arm that houses school partnerships and owned-school initiatives.
“We have allocated ₹400 crore so far for building the K-12 platform,” the company chief financial officer Amit Sachdeva told analysts. “Once we go through our planning cycle for the next year, we will review where we are and take a fresh view on increasing this allocation.”
The school strategy spans multiple models – partnerships with existing schools under a network integration programme, greenfield and brownfield school projects, and full management control in select cases such as its Tender Heart School partnership.
The push comes as interest in the schooling segment rises, with large education players such as ALLEN Career Institute expanding into schools and higher education, Mint reported last year.
Private equity firms are also stepping up bets on school chains. Mint reported in December that K-12 Techno Services, which runs Orchids International Schools, is in talks with Vitruvian Partners and others for a funding round of over $150 million.
Today, many students attend school in the morning and coaching classes later in the day, a double workload that parents increasingly want to avoid. “Parents want an integrated setup,” Boob said.
PhysicsWallah says its experience running technology-enabled coaching centres through its Vidyapeeth network gives it a “right to win” in schools.
“If we can create value for a Grade 8, 9 or 10 student in Vidyapeeth, we can create similar value in a school environment,” co-founder Boob said, describing the strategy as building a “test-prep-branded school” backed by standardized curriculum, pedagogy and data-driven systems.
The K-12 expansion is part of PhysicsWallah’s broader attempt to evolve from a test-prep specialist into a full-stack education platform.
In the December (Q3FY26) quarter, revenue from operations rose 34% year-on-year to ₹1,082 crore, while net profit stood at ₹102 crore, or a margin of 9%, despite one-time expenses related to labour code changes and IPO costs.
For the first nine months of FY26, revenue grew 31% year-on-year to ₹2,980 crore, surpassing its full-year FY25 revenue of ₹2,886 crore. Online education accounted for about 51% of revenue during the period, while the offline segment contributed 46%.
