How coaching giants are building mini-IITs in Kota and Sikar
They are not IITs, nor do they claim to be one. Yet the coaching institutes of Rajasthan's Kota and Sikar, which prepare lakhs of engineering and medical aspirants, have grown into mini-cities whose scale, influence, and infrastructure are comparable to some IITs.
Multi-storey academic blocks towering over busy roads. Hostels stretching across entire neighbourhoods. Massive dining halls feeding thousands of students every day. Fleets of buses moving between campuses and hostels. No, what we are describing isn't any IIT or AIIMS campus, but coaching centres in Rajasthan's Kota and Sikar.
It won't be an exaggeration if some of the coaching centres are compared to the newer IITs. Because that is the first thing that strikes you while walking through Sikar and Kota's coaching districts. It is the scale at which these cities have now become educational hubs and the growth of some of these coaching centres.
For example, one of the coaching centres in Sikar has 14 academic blocks, extensive hostel facilities, and 1,400 staff members. Even locals use its G-series-marked buildings as landmarks.
The students who fill these buildings spend their days dreaming of securing a seat in an IIT or an AIIMS. Yet many of them are already studying inside educational ecosystems that, in some ways, resemble miniature versions of the institutions they hope to enter.
"The gigantic coaching centres not only help students get good marks and get seats in IITs or AIIMS, but they also provide psychological acclimatisation for students to not get intimidated by the massive IIT campuses," Sunil Tandi, who teaches physics in one of Sikar's biggest coaching institutes, tells India Today Digital.
Scores of students in the coaching hubs of Sikar and Kota come from smaller towns and villages. For many, it is the first time that they live in big campuses among thousands of students.
"The size of these coaching centres has become more or less like that of the IITs, and students feel that they have been on such a campus earlier," says Tandi, who graduated from IIT Bombay in 2016 and worked as a scientist with India's premier space agency ISRO.
The comparison is obviously not to do with academics. It is about how the coaching giants have built mega-campuses and cities have grown around them.
After spending days in the coaching districts of Sikar and Kota, where we went on reporting trips, and observing the widespread campuses, organised hostel networks, institutional branding, dedicated transport systems, and staff and student populations that rival small universities, we couldn't help but start thinking about this story.
We visited the coaching cities of Kota and Sikar and stayed there for days ahead of the NEET UG reexamination today (June 21) due to a question paper leak in May.
THE RISE OF SIKAR AS NEET'S COACHING CAPITAL IN RAJASTHAN
At eight o'clock on a summer morning, Piprali Road in Sikar offers the clearest glimpse of the city's mesmerising educational ecosystem.
Thousands of students emerge from hostels carrying backpacks and water bottles, dressed in institute-branded uniforms, walking in disciplined streams towards widespread coaching campuses. Some students in the city have travelled hundreds of kilometres from villages and towns across India. Others have crossed state borders to be in Sikar. The roads are lined with buses, hostel buildings, food outlets, and giant hoardings displaying smiling toppers.
By noon, the streets fall silent under the desert heat. By evening, the morning scenes repeat, but on the reverse. Students return from classes carrying books and test papers, their institute identity cards hanging around their necks. Shawls covering their heads to shield themselves from the heat, and conversations revolving around mock tests, ranks, and cut-offs.
For a reporter who's there for the first time, the scene can feel strangely familiar — not because it resembles a traditional coaching town, but because parts of it evoke the atmosphere of a university town with an IIT or AIIMS.
Sikar today hosts well over one lakh students preparing primarily for NEET, making it one of India's largest medical coaching hubs and perhaps the strongest challenger to Kota's long-standing dominance in the coaching industry.
At the centre of this ecosystem stand three major institutions, Gurukripa Career Institute, ALLEN Career Institute, and Matrix Academy. Together, they have transformed not only the city's educational profile but also its physical geography.
Gurukripa is perhaps the most visible force in the city. Operating around 14 academic blocks spread across Piprali Road and Nawalgarh Road, along with extensive hostel facilities, the institute has become so deeply woven into Sikar's geography that locals use its buildings as landmarks.
With an estimated 35,000 students and more than 1,400 staff members, Gurukripa has expanded beyond Sikar into Jaipur, Jodhpur, Alwar, and Agra. Its success in producing top NEET rankers has helped establish it as one of the country's most influential medical coaching brands.
ALLEN brings a different kind of influence. Headquartered in Kota and present in 78 cities across India, it carries one of the strongest brands in the coaching industry. While the institute is often associated nationally with engineering entrance examinations, its Sikar centres reveal a substantial focus on NEET preparation.
Then there is Matrix Academy, which combines coaching facilities, a school and extensive residential infrastructure. While its coaching campuses occupy six acres within the city, its integrated residential school complex near Gokulpura in Sikar is said to span across 50 acres.
Gurukripa's combined academic and hostel infrastructure is estimated to span up to 12 acres across multiple locations. ALLEN's various Sikar centres measure up to five acres.
The acreage alone does not explain their influence. The real story lies in what has been built upon that land.
THE SELF-CONTAINED EDUCATIONAL ECOSYSTEM IN SIKAR AND KOTA
What stands out during a visit to Sikar is that these institutions are no longer merely coaching centres. They function as self-contained educational ecosystems.
Students wear institute-branded uniforms. Their bags, notebooks, jackets, and study materials carry institutional logos. Walking through the city often feels like moving through territories marked by different educational empires.
The branding is impossible to ignore. Huge hoardings tower above intersections. Posters line market roads. Flex banners stretch across streets. In some neighbourhoods, one coaching institute dominates the visual landscape while another commands the next locality.
The reach of these institutions extends beyond academics.
Many coaching centres now operate dedicated media departments. Teams shoot videos, edit content, manage social media accounts, and produce advertising campaigns in-house. Some institutions have developed recognisable anchors and presenters who regularly appear in promotional content.
The accommodation network for students is equally extensive in these Rajasthan cities. Alongside institute-run hostels, hundreds of private hostels and paying guest facilities have emerged around Sikar and Kota. Affordable accommodation, food outlets, stationery shops, and transport services have flourished because of the student economy.
For residents in Kota and Sikar, coaching is not merely an industry. It is the city's economic engine.
Local business owners acknowledge that the flow of students sustains large parts of Sikar's economy. Without coaching, many argue, the city would struggle to generate the same level of commercial activity.
COACHING CAPITAL KOTA: 4,000 HOSTELS WITH 1.8 LAKH ROOMS
The coaching phenomenon is not unique to Sikar. Much of it traces its roots to Kota, India's original coaching capital.
The scale of Kota's coaching industry is not measured merely through classrooms but through the infrastructure that surrounds them.
Take ALLEN Career Institute. Even after enrolment levels declined from their peak years, the institute continues to cater to more than 50,000 students annually. At its height, enrolment reportedly crossed 1.3 lakh students.
The city's broader ecosystem is even more striking. Kota today contains more than 4,000 hostels with an estimated capacity exceeding 1.8 lakh rooms. Alongside them are tens of thousands of paying guest (PG) accommodations spread across different localities. The hostel buildings are impossible to miss.
Rising above residential neighbourhoods, many resemble university campuses rather than conventional student accommodation.
Inside the accommodation facilities, students find furnished rooms, a mess, study halls, housekeeping services, security systems, and organised residential infrastructure. Entire daily routines unfold within these spaces, from breakfast before classes to late-night revision sessions after coaching.
Walking through some of these campuses inevitably invites comparison with India's large residential institutions.
During a visit to IIT Mandi, similar features stood out. Organised hostels, dining halls, study spaces, and residential blocks designed around student life. The purpose might differ, but the physical experience can sometimes appear surprisingly familiar.
The coaching campuses themselves have also evolved. Libraries, auditoriums, laboratories, counselling centres, and dedicated study spaces have become standard features at many major institutes.
For countless students arriving from smaller towns, these campuses provide their first experience of the large-scale educational infrastructure of India.
Students crowd the streets of Kota in the evening, a daily spectacle in a city shaped by India's coaching culture. (Video credit: Rishabh Chauhan)
YES, IITs AND COACHING CENTRES HAVE SOME SIMILARITIES
Among the people best positioned to compare the two worlds — the IITs and coaching centres — are teachers who have studied in IITs before entering the coaching profession.
Sunil Tandi, who graduated from IIT Bombay in 2016, believes the comparison between an IIT and the vast coaching empire of Sikar and Kota arises from the environment students encounter every day. For many aspirants arriving from villages and smaller towns, the sight of multi-storey academic complexes, organised hostels, and thousands of fellow students can be transformative, he says.
Tandi points to another area where coaching institutes have made conscious improvements. "IIT provides great food on its campus and hostels. Similarly, in coaching centre-owned hostels, the food is very good in taste and quality," Tandi tells India Today Digital.
Yet Tandi is equally clear about the limits of the comparison.
"As IITs are government-owned, they have large access to land, and coaching centres cannot afford this type of massive land acquisition. But the size in which coaching centres are growing in Sikar and the size of the buildings in the city is no less than an IIT," he says.
This distinction is to be very clear.
IITs are expansive residential campuses built over hundreds of acres. Coaching institutions, by contrast, are often scattered across multiple locations within a city.
Still, for a teenager preparing for a national entrance examination, the everyday experience can feel remarkably similar.
Raspal, who passed out of IIT Roorkee in 2019 and teaches chemistry at a reputed coaching institute in Sikar, agrees that coaching centres have changed dramatically over the past decade and have become "somewhat like IITs".
"Over the years, coaching classes have developed so many facilities that now they are no less than IITs—not the same exactly, but I'm saying it in a relative sense," Raspal tells India Today Digital.
"Earlier, the coaching institutions operated out of a single building. Now they are vast and huge. There are many advantages to this. The student is mentally prepared to get ready for the larger campus like IIT, which they are aiming to be in," says Raspal.
The former IITian also pointed out crucial distinctions.
"IITs are huge and have a lot of land and resources compared to private coaching institutes in Kota and Sikar. IITs are not scattered. They are encompassed in a single area with a huge amount of land. Coaching centres are scattered in Sikar and Kota. They have multiple blocks, but in different places in a city or around it," he explains.
INTENSE COMPETITION AT COACHING CENTRES NOT THAT HIGH AT IITs
The differences between IITs and coaching centres extend beyond infrastructure.
According to Sunil Tandi, coaching centres are defined by intense competition. "Competition in coaching centres is too high and in IITs students focus on extracurricular activities and not just studies," says Tandi.
On the other hand, Raspal highlights the distinction between studies in IITs and coaching facilities.
"In IITs, students don't attend all the classes. Coaching is more competition-driven and study-based, so that students get good marks and achieve their goal of getting a seat in IIT or AIIMS," he said.
For example, IIT Bombay's Mood Indigo, which sees international bands and lakhs of attendees, is considered Asia's largest college festival. Then there is Rendezvous of IIT Delhi, Saarang of IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur's annual cultural festival Antaragni. IITs are more than just heads poring over books.
A coaching institute is ultimately designed around a single objective of helping students clear an entrance examination.
An IIT is designed around higher education, research, innovation, entrepreneurship, student life, and intellectual exploration.
One prepares students to enter the system. The other is the system itself.
SIKAR AND KOTA: THE CITIES CITY BUILT AROUND ASPIRATION
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of both Sikar and Kota is not the coaching institutes themselves but the cities that have grown around them.
Roads, hostels, transport services, stationery shops, cafeterias, rental markets, and entire neighbourhoods revolve around student life and exam cycles.
Educational brands have become as visible as corporate companies. Their logos dominate intersections. Their colours mark neighbourhoods. Their success stories shape local conversations.
For decades, university towns were built around institutions that produced graduates. Sikar and Kota have created cities built around institutions that prepare students to get into India's top engineering and medical institutes.
That is why the IIT comparison with Sikar and Kota's centres continues to resonate. Not because coaching centres have become IITs. But because they have evolved into something that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago—educational mini-cities whose influence extends beyond classrooms and whose presence shapes the identity of entire cities. For lakhs of students from small towns and villages, these are the IITs before the IITs.
Multi-storey academic blocks towering over busy roads. Hostels stretching across entire neighbourhoods. Massive dining halls feeding thousands of students every day. Fleets of buses moving between campuses and hostels. No, what we are describing isn't any IIT or AIIMS campus, but coaching centres in Rajasthan's Kota and Sikar.
It won't be an exaggeration if some of the coaching centres are compared to the newer IITs. Because that is the first thing that strikes you while walking through Sikar and Kota's coaching districts. It is the scale at which these cities have now become educational hubs and the growth of some of these coaching centres.
For example, one of the coaching centres in Sikar has 14 academic blocks, extensive hostel facilities, and 1,400 staff members. Even locals use its G-series-marked buildings as landmarks.
The students who fill these buildings spend their days dreaming of securing a seat in an IIT or an AIIMS. Yet many of them are already studying inside educational ecosystems that, in some ways, resemble miniature versions of the institutions they hope to enter.
"The gigantic coaching centres not only help students get good marks and get seats in IITs or AIIMS, but they also provide psychological acclimatisation for students to not get intimidated by the massive IIT campuses," Sunil Tandi, who teaches physics in one of Sikar's biggest coaching institutes, tells India Today Digital.
Scores of students in the coaching hubs of Sikar and Kota come from smaller towns and villages. For many, it is the first time that they live in big campuses among thousands of students.
"The size of these coaching centres has become more or less like that of the IITs, and students feel that they have been on such a campus earlier," says Tandi, who graduated from IIT Bombay in 2016 and worked as a scientist with India's premier space agency ISRO.
The comparison is obviously not to do with academics. It is about how the coaching giants have built mega-campuses and cities have grown around them.
After spending days in the coaching districts of Sikar and Kota, where we went on reporting trips, and observing the widespread campuses, organised hostel networks, institutional branding, dedicated transport systems, and staff and student populations that rival small universities, we couldn't help but start thinking about this story.
We visited the coaching cities of Kota and Sikar and stayed there for days ahead of the NEET UG reexamination today (June 21) due to a question paper leak in May.
THE RISE OF SIKAR AS NEET'S COACHING CAPITAL IN RAJASTHAN
At eight o'clock on a summer morning, Piprali Road in Sikar offers the clearest glimpse of the city's mesmerising educational ecosystem.
Thousands of students emerge from hostels carrying backpacks and water bottles, dressed in institute-branded uniforms, walking in disciplined streams towards widespread coaching campuses. Some students in the city have travelled hundreds of kilometres from villages and towns across India. Others have crossed state borders to be in Sikar. The roads are lined with buses, hostel buildings, food outlets, and giant hoardings displaying smiling toppers.
By noon, the streets fall silent under the desert heat. By evening, the morning scenes repeat, but on the reverse. Students return from classes carrying books and test papers, their institute identity cards hanging around their necks. Shawls covering their heads to shield themselves from the heat, and conversations revolving around mock tests, ranks, and cut-offs.
For a reporter who's there for the first time, the scene can feel strangely familiar — not because it resembles a traditional coaching town, but because parts of it evoke the atmosphere of a university town with an IIT or AIIMS.
Sikar today hosts well over one lakh students preparing primarily for NEET, making it one of India's largest medical coaching hubs and perhaps the strongest challenger to Kota's long-standing dominance in the coaching industry.
At the centre of this ecosystem stand three major institutions, Gurukripa Career Institute, ALLEN Career Institute, and Matrix Academy. Together, they have transformed not only the city's educational profile but also its physical geography.
Gurukripa is perhaps the most visible force in the city. Operating around 14 academic blocks spread across Piprali Road and Nawalgarh Road, along with extensive hostel facilities, the institute has become so deeply woven into Sikar's geography that locals use its buildings as landmarks.
With an estimated 35,000 students and more than 1,400 staff members, Gurukripa has expanded beyond Sikar into Jaipur, Jodhpur, Alwar, and Agra. Its success in producing top NEET rankers has helped establish it as one of the country's most influential medical coaching brands.
ALLEN brings a different kind of influence. Headquartered in Kota and present in 78 cities across India, it carries one of the strongest brands in the coaching industry. While the institute is often associated nationally with engineering entrance examinations, its Sikar centres reveal a substantial focus on NEET preparation.
Then there is Matrix Academy, which combines coaching facilities, a school and extensive residential infrastructure. While its coaching campuses occupy six acres within the city, its integrated residential school complex near Gokulpura in Sikar is said to span across 50 acres.
Gurukripa's combined academic and hostel infrastructure is estimated to span up to 12 acres across multiple locations. ALLEN's various Sikar centres measure up to five acres.
The acreage alone does not explain their influence. The real story lies in what has been built upon that land.
THE SELF-CONTAINED EDUCATIONAL ECOSYSTEM IN SIKAR AND KOTA
What stands out during a visit to Sikar is that these institutions are no longer merely coaching centres. They function as self-contained educational ecosystems.
Students wear institute-branded uniforms. Their bags, notebooks, jackets, and study materials carry institutional logos. Walking through the city often feels like moving through territories marked by different educational empires.
The branding is impossible to ignore. Huge hoardings tower above intersections. Posters line market roads. Flex banners stretch across streets. In some neighbourhoods, one coaching institute dominates the visual landscape while another commands the next locality.
The reach of these institutions extends beyond academics.
Many coaching centres now operate dedicated media departments. Teams shoot videos, edit content, manage social media accounts, and produce advertising campaigns in-house. Some institutions have developed recognisable anchors and presenters who regularly appear in promotional content.
The accommodation network for students is equally extensive in these Rajasthan cities. Alongside institute-run hostels, hundreds of private hostels and paying guest facilities have emerged around Sikar and Kota. Affordable accommodation, food outlets, stationery shops, and transport services have flourished because of the student economy.
For residents in Kota and Sikar, coaching is not merely an industry. It is the city's economic engine.
Local business owners acknowledge that the flow of students sustains large parts of Sikar's economy. Without coaching, many argue, the city would struggle to generate the same level of commercial activity.
COACHING CAPITAL KOTA: 4,000 HOSTELS WITH 1.8 LAKH ROOMS
The coaching phenomenon is not unique to Sikar. Much of it traces its roots to Kota, India's original coaching capital.
The scale of Kota's coaching industry is not measured merely through classrooms but through the infrastructure that surrounds them.
Take ALLEN Career Institute. Even after enrolment levels declined from their peak years, the institute continues to cater to more than 50,000 students annually. At its height, enrolment reportedly crossed 1.3 lakh students.
The city's broader ecosystem is even more striking. Kota today contains more than 4,000 hostels with an estimated capacity exceeding 1.8 lakh rooms. Alongside them are tens of thousands of paying guest (PG) accommodations spread across different localities. The hostel buildings are impossible to miss.
Rising above residential neighbourhoods, many resemble university campuses rather than conventional student accommodation.
Inside the accommodation facilities, students find furnished rooms, a mess, study halls, housekeeping services, security systems, and organised residential infrastructure. Entire daily routines unfold within these spaces, from breakfast before classes to late-night revision sessions after coaching.
Walking through some of these campuses inevitably invites comparison with India's large residential institutions.
During a visit to IIT Mandi, similar features stood out. Organised hostels, dining halls, study spaces, and residential blocks designed around student life. The purpose might differ, but the physical experience can sometimes appear surprisingly familiar.
The coaching campuses themselves have also evolved. Libraries, auditoriums, laboratories, counselling centres, and dedicated study spaces have become standard features at many major institutes.
For countless students arriving from smaller towns, these campuses provide their first experience of the large-scale educational infrastructure of India.
Students crowd the streets of Kota in the evening, a daily spectacle in a city shaped by India's coaching culture. (Video credit: Rishabh Chauhan)
YES, IITs AND COACHING CENTRES HAVE SOME SIMILARITIES
Among the people best positioned to compare the two worlds — the IITs and coaching centres — are teachers who have studied in IITs before entering the coaching profession.
Sunil Tandi, who graduated from IIT Bombay in 2016, believes the comparison between an IIT and the vast coaching empire of Sikar and Kota arises from the environment students encounter every day. For many aspirants arriving from villages and smaller towns, the sight of multi-storey academic complexes, organised hostels, and thousands of fellow students can be transformative, he says.
Tandi points to another area where coaching institutes have made conscious improvements. "IIT provides great food on its campus and hostels. Similarly, in coaching centre-owned hostels, the food is very good in taste and quality," Tandi tells India Today Digital.
Yet Tandi is equally clear about the limits of the comparison.
"As IITs are government-owned, they have large access to land, and coaching centres cannot afford this type of massive land acquisition. But the size in which coaching centres are growing in Sikar and the size of the buildings in the city is no less than an IIT," he says.
This distinction is to be very clear.
IITs are expansive residential campuses built over hundreds of acres. Coaching institutions, by contrast, are often scattered across multiple locations within a city.
Still, for a teenager preparing for a national entrance examination, the everyday experience can feel remarkably similar.
Raspal, who passed out of IIT Roorkee in 2019 and teaches chemistry at a reputed coaching institute in Sikar, agrees that coaching centres have changed dramatically over the past decade and have become "somewhat like IITs".
"Over the years, coaching classes have developed so many facilities that now they are no less than IITs—not the same exactly, but I'm saying it in a relative sense," Raspal tells India Today Digital.
"Earlier, the coaching institutions operated out of a single building. Now they are vast and huge. There are many advantages to this. The student is mentally prepared to get ready for the larger campus like IIT, which they are aiming to be in," says Raspal.
The former IITian also pointed out crucial distinctions.
"IITs are huge and have a lot of land and resources compared to private coaching institutes in Kota and Sikar. IITs are not scattered. They are encompassed in a single area with a huge amount of land. Coaching centres are scattered in Sikar and Kota. They have multiple blocks, but in different places in a city or around it," he explains.
INTENSE COMPETITION AT COACHING CENTRES NOT THAT HIGH AT IITs
The differences between IITs and coaching centres extend beyond infrastructure.
According to Sunil Tandi, coaching centres are defined by intense competition. "Competition in coaching centres is too high and in IITs students focus on extracurricular activities and not just studies," says Tandi.
On the other hand, Raspal highlights the distinction between studies in IITs and coaching facilities.
"In IITs, students don't attend all the classes. Coaching is more competition-driven and study-based, so that students get good marks and achieve their goal of getting a seat in IIT or AIIMS," he said.
For example, IIT Bombay's Mood Indigo, which sees international bands and lakhs of attendees, is considered Asia's largest college festival. Then there is Rendezvous of IIT Delhi, Saarang of IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur's annual cultural festival Antaragni. IITs are more than just heads poring over books.
A coaching institute is ultimately designed around a single objective of helping students clear an entrance examination.
An IIT is designed around higher education, research, innovation, entrepreneurship, student life, and intellectual exploration.
One prepares students to enter the system. The other is the system itself.
SIKAR AND KOTA: THE CITIES CITY BUILT AROUND ASPIRATION
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of both Sikar and Kota is not the coaching institutes themselves but the cities that have grown around them.
Roads, hostels, transport services, stationery shops, cafeterias, rental markets, and entire neighbourhoods revolve around student life and exam cycles.
Educational brands have become as visible as corporate companies. Their logos dominate intersections. Their colours mark neighbourhoods. Their success stories shape local conversations.
For decades, university towns were built around institutions that produced graduates. Sikar and Kota have created cities built around institutions that prepare students to get into India's top engineering and medical institutes.
That is why the IIT comparison with Sikar and Kota's centres continues to resonate. Not because coaching centres have become IITs. But because they have evolved into something that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago—educational mini-cities whose influence extends beyond classrooms and whose presence shapes the identity of entire cities. For lakhs of students from small towns and villages, these are the IITs before the IITs.
