iWorld
Physicswallah acquires Nextseed Foundation for Rs 1 lakh
Edtech firm completes 100 per cent stake purchase, making it wholly owned subsidiary.
MUMBAI: Physicswallah just aced another acquisition because when you’re already teaching millions, why not add a non-profit to the syllabus for just a lakh? Physicswallah Limited announced on Thursday that it has completed the acquisition of Nextseed Foundation, a Section 8 non-profit company, making it a wholly owned subsidiary with effect from 18 March 2026. The transaction, approved by the board on 5 February 2026, involved purchasing 100 per cent of the issued and paid-up equity share capital for a consideration of Rs 1 lakh.
The deal marks the formal closure of the acquisition, with detailed disclosures already submitted to stock exchanges in February in line with SEBI’s Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR).
Nextseed Foundation will now operate as part of Physicswallah’s broader education ecosystem, aligning with the company’s ongoing strategy to diversify and strengthen its presence across segments.
The announcement comes on the heels of strong financial performance. Physicswallah reported a 34 per cent year-on-year increase in operating revenue to Rs 1,082 crore in Q3 FY26 (from Rs 810 crore in Q3 FY25). Net profit rose 33 per cent to Rs 102 crore (from Rs 77 crore), and surged 46 per cent sequentially from Rs 70 crore in Q2 FY26, crossing the Rs 100 crore quarterly mark for the first time.
In an edtech landscape where growth is the ultimate exam, Physicswallah isn’t just passing, it’s topping the class, one strategic move (and one very affordable acquisition) at a time.
Gaming
India’s broadcasters say no to Fifa World Cup 2026
Fifa has slashed its asking price by 65 per cent but India’s broadcasters are still not buying
MUMBAI: The world’s biggest sporting event cannot find a single taker in the world’s most sports-mad nation. Fifa’s television rights for the 2026 World Cup remain unsold in India, and the clock is ticking loudly.
To shift the property, world football’s governing body has already swallowed hard and cut its asking price from $100m to $35m, bundling in the 2030 edition as a sweetener. It has not worked. Indian broadcasters have looked at the offer, done the sums and quietly walked away.
The reasons are brutally simple. The 2026 tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, kicks off in a time zone that turns India’s primetime into a graveyard shift. Most matches will air between midnight and 7am IST, a scheduling catastrophe for advertisers chasing mass reach. The 2022 Qatar edition was a gift by comparison, with matches dropping neatly into Indian evenings. North America offers no such luxury.
The market itself has also changed beyond recognition. The merger of Star India and Viacom18 into JioStar has gutted the competitive tension that once sent sports rights prices soaring. Where rival bidders once slugged it out, there is now a single dominant buyer, and it is in no hurry. JioStar has valued the rights at roughly $25m, a full $10m below Fifa’s already-discounted floor price. That gap has so far proved unbridgeable.
Broadcasters are also nursing a ferocious cricket hangover. Between 2022 and 2023, Indian media houses committed well over $10bn to cricket rights alone, covering IPL, ICC events and BCCI domestic fixtures combined. After a binge of that scale, appetite for a football package that delivers a fraction of the ratings, in the dead of night, is close to zero.
The economics of football broadcasting make the maths even harder. Cricket, with its natural breaks every few overs, is an advertiser’s paradise. Football offers a 15-minute halftime and precious little else. Recovering a nine-figure rights fee from a single half-hour ad window is a stretch at the best of times. These are not the best of times: the Indian government’s tightening grip on real-money gaming and gambling advertising has vaporised a category that once underwrote the economics of big sporting events.
Nor is the World Cup an anomaly. Indian Super League valuations have cratered. English Premier League rights have softened across successive cycles. The cooling of football as a broadcast commodity in India is structural, not cyclical.
With the tournament opening on 11th June, Fifa is running out of road. It may yet blink and meet JioStar at $25m. Or it may go direct, streaming the entire tournament on its own platform, Fifa+, or cutting a digital deal with YouTube, and hoping that a generation of Indian football fans finds its way there without a broadcaster to guide them.
Either way, the beautiful game’s Indian chapter is looking decidedly ugly.
