PhysicsWallah unveils Aryabhata 1.0, AI model built for JEE Maths students

PhysicsWallah (PW) has announced its first artificial intelligence tool, Aryabhata 1.0, aimed at helping students preparing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main. The company’s co-founder, Prateek Maheshwari, revealed the new small language model (SLM) in a recent LinkedIn post, positioning it as an exam-specific AI trained specifically for mathematics.

Unlike large-scale general-purpose models, Aryabhata 1.0 is a compact 7-billion-parameter AI model designed to deliver focused support for Indian learners. Maheshwari said it managed to outperform several larger models in JEE Main Mathematics, scoring 86% in the January 2025 session and 90.2% in the April attempt. Despite its high performance, it was trained using minimal infrastructure, relying on a single H100 GPU.

The model was fine-tuned using a dataset of 130,000 curated question-answer pairs. PW used a combination of supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and rejection sampling to optimise the AI’s performance. Maheshwari described it as “a step towards pedagogically grounded reasoning patterns” tailored to high-stakes exams like JEE.

“Sometimes, the right support at the right moment can change a student’s entire path,” Maheshwari wrote in the post. “At PW, we believe AI can offer that support if it’s built with care, context, and purpose. That belief led us to create compact, exam-focused Small Language Models designed for the real needs of Indian learners.”

The company now plans to expand Aryabhata 1.0 to cover additional topics within mathematics and support JEE Advanced aspirants in the coming phases.