The company’s net profit, however, fell to Rs 16 crore in FY23 from Rs 98 crore in the previous fiscal, on account of a jump in its employee costs and provisioning of certain non-cash expenses, it said in a statement.
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The Noida-based company has not yet filed its financial returns with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
The edtech’s expenses saw a significant jump during FY23. Total expenses, including one-time costs and non-cash items, came in at Rs 777 crore for FY23, an over seven-fold increase from Rs 103 crore in the year-ago period.
This included a ten-fold increase in the company’s employee benefit expenses to Rs 406 crore in FY23 from Rs 42 crore in FY22. Physics Wallah’s chief strategy officer Abhishek Mishra told ET that the costs include expenses on account of employee stock options – which were not provisioned for last year – worth Rs 38 crore.
Physics Wallah, which raised $100 million during FY23, also went on an acquisition spree in the year, buying eight smaller companies, including Xylem Learning, PrepOnline and Altis Vortex. The revenue from this inorganic expansion to the tune of around Rs 500 crore, will be reflected in its FY24 consolidated financials, it said.
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“Our growth was significant both in the online and offline space. Our online categories grew to 2.5x in terms of students headcount from 9 lakh in FY22 to 23.5 lakh in FY23 while our offline student headcount grew to 5.5x touching 60,000 enrolments in FY23,” said cofounder Prateek Maheshwari.“We will keep investing in more categories…to remain in a hyper-growth phase. We are in no hurry to compromise growth for achieving a steady-state margin profile,” he added.
Its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) – excluding the one-time non-cash expenses – came in at Rs 127 crore in FY23, against Rs 134 crore in FY22.
In terms of revenue, around one-third of its income came in from the offline business as it widened its offline presence. The company currently has 58 offline centres, and plans to take this number to over 120 centres by the end of this fiscal.
The expansion in Physics Wallah’s scale comes at a time when the broader edtech ecosystem has been witnessing a slump. Last month, Physics Wallah also laid off 120 people on account of performance concerns.
Other edtech firms including Byju’s and Unacademy have also been under pressure to cut down on cash burn and move towards profitability. Byju’s laid off 2,500 employees in October this year.