The Netflix model may just save India's online learning apps

ONE SUMMER MORNING nearly two years ago, 127,000 Indian teenagers thronged the internet not for an online rock concert, but a test-prep session.

For Physics Wallah, which coaches aspirants for punishing engineering and medical school entrance exams, this was the largest live lecture the edutech had ever run, though its regular classes also pack 50,000 learners nowadays.And it all happens in real-time: If anyone gets stuck, standby instructors are available in chat rooms or over video calls, with artificial intelligence helping to predict the parts students are likely to find difficult.

India's online test-prep business isn't much different from a gigantic and highly interactive - digital media operation. The Physics Wallah app has 2 million users logging in daily and spending 80 minutes. With that kind of audience engagement, it's possible to make money by charging an average customer $50 a year, a third less than the cost of a two-device Netflix subscription in India.

PW, as it's commonly known, was a two-year-old platform when its first institutional fundraise - $100 million from WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures - turned it into a unicorn with a $1.1 billion valuation.

That was in 2022, when Byju's, another Indian startup, was the world's most valuable educational technology business.

Then Byju's began to crumble. As schools reopened after the pandemic, its K-12 business waned. A unit that taught youngsters how to code imploded. An established network of test coaching centers, one of founder Byju Raveendran's many expensive acquisitions, is doing well. But that franchise - Aakash Educational Services - has several owners and can't be easily monetised.