PhysicsWallah School of Startups (PW SoS), the entrepreneurship arm of listed edtech company PhysicsWallah, has signed a two-year memorandum of understanding with Startup India, run by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
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The partnership is aimed at founders in Tier-II and Tier-III cities and rural areas. It will combine online and residential training, product prototyping guidance, incubation infrastructure, investor access and early-stage seed capital, the two sides said.
PW SoS said the tie-up brings its own entrepreneurship programmes together with Startup India’s nationwide ecosystem network and outreach, with the goal of strengthening regional innovation hubs.
What founders will get
PW SoS is introducing a set of programmes for founders at different stages under the partnership.
PW UDYAMI is a 90-day live online training programme followed by a year of mentorship, meant for entrepreneurs from small towns and rural areas. Aarambh Immersion is a five-day residential programme on prototype development, pitch preparation and networking.
For more mature companies, a Growth Stage CEO Programme will take in 200 DPIIT-recognised startups across four hybrid cohorts and help them prepare to raise growth funding. A six-month PW DeepTech Accelerator will work with a smaller group of selected ventures.
Early-stage innovators can also get proof-of-concept opportunities, corporate pilots and seed investment through PW’s annual National AI Startup Challenge and SeedX. Incubation support and seed grants will be offered through the StartinUP Business Incubation Centre that PW SoS hosts.
“Supporting entrepreneurs beyond Tier-I cities is key to building a stronger startup ecosystem in India. Our partnership with PhysicsWallah School of Startups will help grassroots innovators access the resources, mentorship and infrastructure they need to turn their ideas into scalable, job-creating businesses across Bharat,” said Ateesh Kumar Singh, Additional Secretary, DPIIT.
“True empowerment means making knowledge, mentorship and funding accessible to aspiring entrepreneurs across Bharat,” said Rounaq Mustafa, Head of PW School of Startups. He added that PW SoS would use initiatives like PW UDYAMI, Aarambh and its deeptech acceleration programmes “to help turn ideas into successful businesses”.
How PW’s startup arm got here
PhysicsWallah launched the School of Startups in August 2024 with three programmes, Aarambh, Prarambh and Hopes Alive, and a Rs 100 crore fund to back more than 100 startups, according to a company statement at the time.
Co-founder Alakh Pandey said then that he saw “immense potential in the startups emerging from Tier 2 and 3 cities”, whose founders “often struggle due to a lack of guidance and the absence of a supportive community”.
In March this year, PW SoS was accredited as an incubator under the Uttar Pradesh government’s StartInUP initiative. It runs incubation centres in Noida and Lucknow, with tracks covering product validation (LeapX), go-to-market planning (MarketX), early-stage capital (SeedX), mentorship (Samadhan) and team building (TeamX).
This is also not PhysicsWallah’s first project with Startup India. Earlier this year it ran a PW AI Startup Challenge 2026 with Startup India and DPIIT, committing up to Rs 10 crore for AI-first startups from seed to Series A stage, as well as student innovators. Shortlisted teams pitched at PW’s Noida headquarters on 20-21 August.
PhysicsWallah was founded in 2020 by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari and began as a YouTube channel in 2016. It is headquartered in Noida and listed on the NSE and BSE on 18 November 2025.
The PW agreement comes a day after DPIIT said it had recognised 2,50,046 startups across more than 770 districts, which have generated over 25.42 lakh jobs. About 52% of these recognised startups are based in non-metro cities, according to DPIIT data released on 27 October.
Under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, Rs 775.67 crore has been approved for 4,194 startups through 244 incubators, including 2,356 startups from Tier-II and Tier-III cities. That works out to an average of roughly Rs 18.5 lakh per startup.