From shopkeepers and autorickshaw drivers to the managers of hostels, almost everyone in Kota says the same thing: “This is the first time I have seen so many students in this city.” As the “coaching centre city” in Rajasthan welcomes tens of thousands of students after two years of a lull forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, posters exhorting “#ReviveKota” dot the landscape. The Talwandi area, where most of the coaching classes are situated, is bustling with eager-looking students waiting to get started on the gruelling preparation for medical or engineering entrance exams.
Around 2 lakh students joined coaching classes in Kota annually prior to the pandemic; this year, an additional 75,000 to 1 lakh students are estimated to have made their way here. Some institutes are reporting a doubling or tripling in the number of admissions when compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Nitin Vijay, founder and CEO of Motion Education, one of the biggest coaching centres here, said that for this "new [bigger] market", ed-tech companies like Unacademy and Physicswallah, who have opened their first physical coaching centres in Kota this year, can take partial credit. His centre has also seen its classrooms swell by three times when compared with 2019, Mr. Vijay said.
