Delhi’s top IIT coaching centres have one address: Kalu Sarai

Delhi’s top IIT coaching centres have one address: Kalu Sarai - Express India

Deepu Sebastian Edmond,Deepu Sebastian Edmond
Posted: May 27, 2010 at 0025 hrs IST
New delhi
One could be forgiven for thinking that Rahul Deshwal, awaiting his Class X results, would have tried out a lot of permutations and combinations before choosing the institute to which he would travel thrice a week for two years from his Badarpur residence for his IIT-JEE coaching.

But, Nitin Jain shrunk Rahul’s calculations to just one name. “Nitin Jain, who topped the Joint Entrance Examination for the Indian Institutes of Technology in 2009, studied in the FIITJEE’s Kalu Sarai centre. Hence, I chose the same,” says Rahul.

FIITJEE has not repeated its success this year, but IIT aspirants will still flock to Kalu Sarai, which houses at least 17 coaching centres with nearly 7,000 youngsters. As if to inspire the students, it is situated close to IIT-Delhi.

Narayana — which has cornered the first four ranks — seems to be the most sought after institute this year. “Yes, it seems so. However, it all depends on the student,” says Rahul, adding that he does not regret his choice. “They still have the best faculty in this particular centre.”

“Securing the first rank matters. We have seen a dip in the number of admission enquiries compared to last year, but since Bansal’s Classes in Kota has not performed well, we expect students to flock to us eventually,” admitted an employee of the FIITJEE group.

For Madhur Tulsiani it the proximity of the coaching centres that presents more opportunities. “I joined Narayana as they had the best teachers. However, after Pie lured them all, I too shifted there,” he smiles.

“At the end of the day, this is a market. You want to be where the competition is, and hence the cluster. The students also find it easy to find institutes; it also helps competitiveness as they are always comparing their performance with their friends in other institutes,” says Shivraj Singh of Resonance Coaching Centre.

“We get students from states like Bihar, MP, UP, J&K apart from the NCR. However, since Kota came up as a JEE destination, the number of students from other states has come down,” says Singh. Many of the centres even provide hostel
facilities.

The coaching centres have also spawned a community catering to their needs. “I have been here for 14 years and now, we are also supplying books and other study material to the coaching centres,” says G S Mishra of Mishra Book Depot, busy servicing new students.

Kalu Sarai’s tryst with the JEE started in 1992, with the start of the first-ever FIITJEE centre here. “We introduced the concept of classroom teaching. Till then, Brilliant Tutorials and the now defunct Aggarwals’ Classes were the market leaders, but they had only correspondence material,” said a FIITJEE employee. “This will be our 18 th batch. With around 3,000 students, we are still the biggest centre,” he says. “The best too,” he adds as an afterthought.

On Wednesday, it was time for the change of guard. Waiting anxiously in the lobby of a coaching centre was Anurag Verma, whose son had topped the centre. “His rank is 728 and may not get his preferred Computer Science,” says Verma, as his son was being counselled inside on his options