Dream not over yet: Kota IIT classes spread out India-wide

Dream not over yet: Kota IIT classes spread out India-wide

MUMBAI: Three years ago, Kota-based coaching class Insight made a quiet entry in Mumbai’s western suburbs. The academy didn’t spend an ounce on brand-building ; all it mentioned in its pamphlets was that it came from Rajasthan’s coaching hub.

That was the time when Resonance, another Kota-headquartered coaching academy, set shop in Delhi. It adopted a big-bang approach ; bus panels and billboards screamed about its arrival . In the meantime, Kota’s Big Daddy — Bansal Classes — also set up two branches in Jaipur and in Ajmer.

Two decades ago, Kota, an obscure speck along the Chambal , was in the news for a spate of suicides that took place after J K Synthetics closed down, leaving 4,000 of its employees jobless. Today, however, this town is a brand that claims to know the formula that IIT aspirants must apply to get inside the premier tech schools.

As Lokesh Khandelwal, director and co-founder of Resonance , proudly proclaims, ‘‘ Classes in Kota have developed a system which is superior to any other. About 40% students who make it to the IITs have benefited from the approach designed at Kota.’’ And it’s not all big talk; close to 50,000 IIT contenders from across the country travel to Kota each year for that passport into the IITs. So why is Kota coming to them?

Experts who know a thing or two about IIT-JEE and Kota say many of the Kota institutes that are reaching out to students across the country are doing so to attract talent. In an industry driven by the final outcome , or the grand JEE result, attracting bright students is essential for survival.

‘‘ At the end of the game, the IIT ranks that students get speak louder than a million ads,’’ Praveen Tyagi, proprietor of a Mumbai-based class IITian’s Pace, feels. A few years ago, Bansal Classes used to admit a few thousand students. Now, it annually takes in tens of thousands, netting the best of the IIT prospects, and that probably has prompted the other coaching classes to spread their net farther and wider.

But these institutes say their reaching out has nothing to do with Bansal’s expansion. After teaching for 22 years in Kota, R K Sharma, managing director of Aakrati, has started a residential coaching class in Mumbai and calls it ‘‘ Mini-Kota’’ . He gives presentations for prospective candidates and their parents and provides them several reasons for not moving out of home: ‘‘ Why move away from your family?’’ and ‘‘ No need to adjust to the extreme climate of Kota’ ’ are two of those reasons.

Sharma is confident that, after watching his PPT, parents will think at least 10 times before sending their children to Kota. Concurs B V Rao, founder -director of Rao’s IIT Academy, ‘‘ No matter what, we can’t take care of these students 24x7. When they come to Kota, we exactly know what they do during class. But we have no idea of the time they get up, the food they eat. So we decided to set up a base in other parts.’’

Career Point has expanded to 13 cities of India. Rao’s IIT Academy is present in cities of West Bengal, Gujarat and Resonance Academy has spread across 13 branches in different cities, including Bangalore, Delhi , Bhopal, Jaipur,Rajkot and Bhubaneshwar. But all this does not mean that the attraction of going to Kota, the place known for its rigorous training, has faded. The class strength of the centres in Kota is still more than that you’d find in any of the outstation centres, says Insight proprietor Shishir Mittal; he has 2,000 students, 800 of whom are contributed by only Kota.

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