By Vernon Mascarenhas

Mar 23: Kota is identified as the birthplace of the formal coaching industry that attracts thousands of students from across the states and countries. Considering that the leading players of the city have swelled in revenue and the number of students they cater to, it is only natural for them to think of franchising and capture those students who were not able to come to the city.

Looking at the key players, Bansal, that was one of the pioneers but later lost its ground in the business, has more than 20 centers while Resonance has around 40 centers across the country. Allen Career Institute, another pioneering player also has around 40 centers spread across various two-tier cities. While Resonance follows a franchising business, Allen owns the centers and controls them from their headquarters in Kota itself. Allen also has a foothold in the Middle East offering counseling and test prep training.

But how does franchising and reaching different cities work for these businesses and the students? Allen’s centers in different cities are just as full as the Kota campus with the strength of centers ranging from 5000 to 20000 students. The fee structure of different centers also varies across the cities. The fee variation can be attributed either to operating costs for a business or to the quality of teachers offered. While they also claim to follow a similar pattern of the academic system and quality of teachers across all centers, Allen website prefers to use the term ‘Classroom’ when announcing their top ranking students but provides no clarity on which city’s classroom these students came out and hence, making it hard to disambiguate between the outputs of various centers.

There is no specific information about teacher salaries but no teachers are in the crore plus bracket in different centers as opposed to Kota where many teachers make money more than a crore per year. It is ironic that the Allen teachers preparing students to enter IITs make more money than the IIT professor themselves.

Looking at reviews across the web, Allen non-Kota centers garner a mix of reviews. But having a close look, it is hard to distinguish if the reviews are referring to that particular center since the commentary is on Allen as a brand and not for the center. The flood of polarizing generic reviews is also, possibly the outcome of the attempts of creating an image with rivals posting negative reviews and then Allen trying to balance the ratings with positive reviews. Similar trends are noted for other coaching institutes in Kota.

Overall, the coaching industry presents a blurry picture of the success of its franchisee business in terms of student output. It should be noted that Byjus is also coming with tuition centers so the crossovers are on both the ends of the online and offline coaching spectrum.