A keynote by Kanhaiya Kale, co-founder of New Indictrans Technologies Pvt. Ltd., at Frappeverse 2025: How we built a future-ready, open-source backend to power PhysicsWallah’s scale from a YouTube channel to an IPO-bound EdTech giant.
The story of PhysicsWallah (PW) is one of the most remarkable chapters in the Indian EdTech narrative. What began as a humble YouTube channel in 2014 by Alakh Pandey has evolved into a powerhouse of 15,000+ employees and a nationwide presence.
However, rapid growth often brings “scaling pains.” At Frappeverse India 2025, Kanhaiya Kale, Director at Indictrans, revealed the technical journey behind the scenes. He detailed how PhysicsWallah moved from a fragmented software landscape to a unified, open-source backend powered by ERPNext.
The Infrastructure Crisis: A House Divided
As PhysicsWallah scaled from a digital-first platform to a hybrid model with hundreds of physical centers, its back-office infrastructure struggled to keep up. Before the intervention of Indictrans and ERPNext, the organization faced several critical bottlenecks:
- Software Fragmentation: The IT environment was “scattered.” Accounting was being handled through a mix of Finley, Zoho Books, and SAP. Operational data was trapped in Jotforms and other disparate tools.
- Lack of Visibility: With 100+ centers across India, the management had no single source of truth for asset management or inventory tracking.
- The “Rigidity” Barrier: While exploring Tier-1 enterprise solutions like Oracle and SAP, PW found them to be too rigid. They needed a system that offered the “freedom to customize” a digital reflection of their democratic and accessible organizational culture.
Before you go further, don’t miss our earlier blog: ERPNext Not Working as Expected? Here’s the Success Package!
The Philosophy of Alignment
PhysicsWallah’s core mission is to make education affordable and accessible. When their team attended Frappe events, they realized that ERPNext operated on the same principles. Being open-source, it wasn’t just a cost-effective choice; it was a philosophical match.
The goal wasn’t just to buy a tool but to adopt a platform that gave them the sovereignty to build their own future.
The Indictrans Strategy: A Phased Transformation
Rather than attempting a high-risk “big bang” migration, Indictrans and PW implemented a modular, high-impact strategy. Each phase was designed to solve a specific pain point while integrating seamlessly with existing legacy systems.
1. The Proving Ground: Zylm Subsidiary
The journey started with PhysicsWallah’s subsidiary, Zylm. Within six months, the team automated the entire lifecycle from Procure-to-Pay (P2P) and accounting to assets and sales. This served as the successful “proof of concept” needed to move into the parent organization.
2. Mastering the P2P Cycle
Procurement was a massive pain point for a company with 15,000 employees. Indictrans implemented a P2P cycle that currently supports 800+ procurement users and 300+ accounting users.
Key Innovation: A critical requirement was the integration with SAP. While ERPNext handled the operational agility of procurement, it was fully integrated with their SAP accounting backend to ensure financial reporting remained consolidated and compliant.
3. National Asset and Inventory Control
With physical institutes becoming a core part of the business, tracking furniture, IT equipment, and study materials across India was vital. Today, 100% of PhysicsWallah’s centers are live on the system. All assets and inventories are now accessible and manageable from a single central location, eliminating manual tracking and loss.
4. The Helpdesk and Education Module
The most recent phase involved moving the “Helpdesk” and support ticket management onto the Frappe framework. Additionally, they are currently deploying the Education Module to manage the specific student-teacher workflows required for their physical institutes.
Why the ERPNext + Indictrans Partnership Worked
Kanhaiya Kale highlighted that the success of this implementation boiled down to two factors: the right product and the right partner.
| Benefit | How ERPNext Delivered |
| Customizability | PW could build specific use cases that off-the-shelf software couldn’t handle. |
| Scalability | The system currently handles thousands of users across the country without performance lag. |
| Cost-Efficiency | By leveraging open-source, PW directed their resources toward student impact rather than massive license fees. |
| Speed | Major modules were taken from concept to “Live” in just 3 to 4 months each. |
Conclusion: A Successful IPO-Ready Backend
As PhysicsWallah moves through the process of public listing and IPO, having a robust, audited, and transparent backend is no longer a luxury; it is a requirement. By moving away from “scattered” software and embracing a unified ERPNext ecosystem, PhysicsWallah has built a foundation that is as scalable as its ambition.
As Kanhaiya Kale concluded at Frappeverse, “They got the freedom they were looking for.”
