In the recent years IIT-JEE coaching institutes has gained a lot of importance. 99% of students appearing for this competitive exam are coached at such institutes. There are more and more coaching institutes entering this arena coz of two important things high fees and quality education. IIT – JEE coaching is a more earning proposition than any other type of training. The fees charged by the top three institutes in India are in the range of Rs.1,10,000 to Rs.1,70,000 for the two year course. But a decade back nobody heard about rigorous training to prepare for these competitive exams.
Way back in the year 1990s a person called Vinod Kumar Bansal, grandson of a sweet seller in Jhansi, came to Kota to work as a mechanical engineer for JK Synthetics Ltd., a polyester plant that shut down in the late 1990s. Mr. Bansal started the coaching empire after he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in 1974. In 1983, he met G.D. Agarwal, who ran a Mumbai–based IIT coaching institute. Mr. Bansal says he realized his students could also end up in the elite institutes. He began taking on students who wanted to ace the IIT exam. The trained students from his institute started landing courses in the top IIT institutes. Word of mouth spread fast and he got more students. This went on and he started creating records with maximum students passing the exams and many of his students getting in the top 100.
More than three lakh students take the test each year; around 5,500 are successful. Of the 3,000 students who took Bansal’s classes last year, 955 gained admission in an IIT. To enter Bansal’s classroom, Class 10 students must graduate with more than 75% marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Also the aspiring students must also sit for entrance exam devised by Bansal Classes.
Bansal’s coaching classes have spawned an imitative movement in Kota, a small town with a population of 1.5 million people, about 250 km form Jaipur. The industry now trains an estimated 50,000 youths each year in standardized medical and engineering exams. The most obvious economic impact has been the growth of the coaching industry itself, an estimated 130 coaching institutes now operates out of Kota. It is estimated that 40% of the IIT aspirants come from Kota every year and this trend is increasing.
Some of IIT coaching institutes also started exploring new cities citing the Kota connection. Most of IIT coaching institutes heavily advertise their Kota connection and this helps to get maximum admissions. The numbers of seats in IIT colleges has remained the same or have increased to some extent, but the numbers of students applying for these competitive exams have increased superseding. The total worth of the IIT coaching industry is more than Rs 10000 crore. Some of the institutes to advertise heavily:
So don't be surprised to see the tagline in the advertisements of IIT-JEE coaching institutes "an institute by Kota experts".
