Amid Physics Wallah vs Adda247 row, ex-PW teachers to launch test series
Physics Wallah has alleged that Adda247 has lured some of its teachers to launch a separate YouTube channel. The teachers have denied the claims and now plan to offer educational content for NEET and JEE.
Amid (PW) and row over the poaching of teachers, ex-PW educators who left the edtech firm and started a YouTube channel shared details about a JEE test series that they plan to launch.
Aditya Anand, Manish Dubey, Tarun Kumar, Sarvesh Dixit, and Siddhartha Misra, who claim to have left PW after giving notice to the company, started a YouTube channel called 'Sankalp' on March 3. Now, they plan to offer educational content for NEET and JEE through ‘Parivartan’ JEE test series on the channel.
While NEET is an entrance test for admission to medical colleges for undergraduate medical courses, IIT-JEE is for admissions to UG courses in engineering colleges.
PW vs Adda247
PW has alleged that Adda247 lured these teachers to create a separate platform.
"Yes, five educators of PW's have moved to launch a parallel brand for JEE-NEET competing with us,” Abhishek Mishra, Chief Strategy Officer of PW, said in a statement to YourStory. “Poaching is like an established convention of this industry and we are not facing it for the first time—we have sailed through this two years ago, likewise shall see this through as well.”
However, the ex-PW teachers claimed in a YouTube video that they quit PW because the edtech firm’s atmosphere was no longer conducive to learning or teaching. They claim that they left PW at the end of an academic session after completing the course. They also said that they gave notice to PW prior to leaving the company. However, their YouTube channel has been receiving strikes from PW, they futher claimed.
The edtech unicorn also alleged that Adda247 offered 4 times to 5 times salary to these teachers, and more educators were approached with higher compensation offers. However, the teachers have also denied the allegations of them being paid Rs 5 crore as a bribe from Adda247 to quit PW.
They claim that PW’s teacher Pankaj Sijairya falsely accused them of taking bribes.
Adda247 did not respond to queries sent by YourStory at the time of publication. The educators have not responded to requests for comments either.
Poaching is not a new concept in the coaching industry. Last year, when Unacademy expanded its coaching centres to Kota, it reportedly offered impressive incentives to educators to take on segment leader Allen.
While these teachers have responded to the poaching and bribery allegations through their YouTube channel, they have not published many educational videos yet. Sankalp has 357,000 subscribers, with over 7.5 million views across the nine videos on the channel.
The brainchild of Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, PW started in 2016 as a YouTube channel to coach JEE and NEET aspirants. It offers online courses as well as offline and hybrid coaching through its Vidyapeeths and Pathshalas across India.
PW acquired PrepOnline in October 2022 to enter the government job preparation segment.
Gurugram-based Adda247, which was also founded in 2016, focuses on the government job test prep segment.
Edited by Kanishk Singh