PhysicsWallah’s New Faculty Incentives Policy; Offering Rewards Upto INR 15 Lakhs

The leading edtech giant, PhysicsWallah has introduced new faculty incentives. According to an internal policy document, the organization is offering upto INR 15 lakh as monetary incentives to the faculty for expanding PW’s coaching business.
The incentive is applicable for newly hired faculty who bring high-performing students from competitors to its offline coaching classes. The faculties who enrol students for the 2027 batches will be offered an incentive between INR 2 lakh to INR 15 lakh depending on student’s rank in exam such as JEE Main, NEET, JEE Advanced, etc. If the student secures AIR rank 1, the faculty will be offered INR 15 lakh. For AIR rank 2 and 3, they will be rewarded INR 12 lakh and INR 9 lakh for AIR rank 4 to 10.

AIR Rank vs PW’s Incentive

Check the table below to know how much incentive is offered to the faculty depending on the student’s rank:

The PW’s offline coaching business accounts to about half of the company’s revenue share of INR 1800 crore approximately. The company runs about 150 offline coaching centres in India, and this move is expected to boost the revenue and numbers by turning new faculties into a channel for student acquisition. In financial year 2026, company’s offline revenue grew to INR 1,774 crore, nearing the online revenue, which shows about 31% growth. Offline admissions also increased from 3,25,600 students to 4,67,500 students in a year. 

On this, PhysicsWallah has clarified that the rewards system has not been introduced now, but has been in place for a long time. According to a PW spokesperson, “ Employee rewards programme is not a new exercise at PhysicsWallah. The company periodically reviews and updates such policies…….The criteria for rewards is not merely enrolment but long-term academic outcome on course completion,”
The company has also labelled the move as an employee referral policy linked to students’ academic scores and ranks.

Companies usually have Talent Nurture Teams for admitting academically strong students through school outreach programmes, Olympiads, campus visits, etc. These teams are then rewarded. But, in this case, it has come to notice that at PhysicsWallah, both the recruitment team and faculty are eligible for referring incentives.

Some industry experts say that many coaching institutes link faculty incentives with student acquisition. Some name it as hiring based on performance while some question it on ethical grounds and argue that it might increase competition.
Some experts are also calling it the ‘perverse incentive’ that can distort the industry dynamics and make students leave the current coaching institute that they are a part of.

Well established coaching institutes such as Aakash, Narayana, Resonance, Allen, etc., have top performing faculty and students at the centre and this move has also put PW at par with them.