My co-founder Krishna and I started Avanti with the mission of helping students across India get into good engineering and medical colleges. After spending multiple years in the corporate sector, we decided to start Avanti because we saw two major problems with science and math education in India.
The first is that most students in India are not able to prepare for competitive examinations. The second is that even though there are many coaching classes for competitive exam in India, most of these classes focus only on toppers.
Competitive exams like the IIT JEE, NEET, CET, NTSE & Olympiads are very different from school examinations. While the board exams test students on being able to memorise simple facts, these competitive exams focus on testing problem solving. Problem solving is the ability to use the concepts given in textbooks and apply them to solve complicated problems. In many cases the problems asked in these exams may require knowledge from multiple chapters, in which case the students are required to solve some confusing steps before they can apply the formulae taught to them.
This skill is difficult to master and this is why students require preparation at institutes that are good at teaching them these skills. Many students are not aware that competitive exams are the only way to gain admission to top engineering and medical colleges. Board marks carry no weightage in the process.
This is why even though there are talented students in every district of India, it is mostly students from the metros and from big coaching hubs who are able to clear exams like the IIT JEE and NEET. This has resulted in many families choosing to send their young children away from home to study at coaching hubs like Kota. Unfortunately, lakhs of students each year are undergoing a lot of stress in these centres without achieving their goals.
Last year, more than 1.5 lakh students from Kota appeared for the IIT JEE. Of these less than 2,000 students qualified for the IITs and less than 10,000 qualified the first stage of the IIT Exam. This means that only 1/15 students who went to Kota achieved their goals. The other 1.4 lakh students undergo incredible stress – stories of which appear in the news every year.
We started Avanti to change this. At Avanti, we have devoted our heart and soul towards providing a caring, technology-enabled Gurukul for students to study for competitive exams, close to the comfort of their homes.
We are very proud that more than 30% of our students each year are able to qualify exams like the IIT JEE and go to good colleges. This selection rate is among the highest in India. The secret to our success is our special focus on every child in our classroom. We have the smallest batch-size in the industry (max 35 students) and use expert career guidance, data and technology to create a program that changes as per the students’ needs.
Thousands of students across 11 states and 25 cities are switching to Avanti’s Smart Gurukul to succeed at competitive entrance exams. |
