If you're reading this, chances are you haven't heard of Abhinay Sharma. But that's not because he is a nobody. Rather, he is a huge deal, but only for a specific group of people - those looking to crack exams for government jobs. Sharma's five-year-old YouTube channel, Abhinay Maths, has nearly 2.6 million subscribers. And he has been a popular tutor on the Edtech platform Unacademy. Since October 2022, Sharma has had his own company too. One that is now worth $2 million, thanks to a $480,000 cheque from Tiger Global-backed Classplus, which allows teachers to create apps for live classes, subscriptions, and exams. What Sharma is trying to accomplish is not without precedent. Alakh Pandey parlayed his success as a physics teacher on YouTube into a $1.1 billion startup, Physicswallah. Classplus—valued at ~$630 million—knows how hard it is to pull off another Physicswallah, especially when the pandemic-influenced user growth and easy money in Edtech is history now. And Sharma is aware of the challenges. Often boastful, he was candid enough to wonder aloud, if he had made a mistake in becoming an entrepreneur. He now has 60 employees, all paid in advance, and six state-of-the-art studios, each costing $12,000-18,000
