A group of four students from IIT-Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) have voluntarily undertaken to mentor hundreds of aspirants who clear the written joint entrance examination (JEE) to cover the group discussion and personal interview, the final lap for a coveted IIT seat.
The four IIT-KGP alumni - Rajiv Agarwal, Nishant Shah, Lokesh Verma and Manish Shankar - pooled in close to Rs 5 lakh to create ‘Edudigm’.
According to Rajiv Agarwal, co-founder of Edudigm, “Our intention is to help IIT aspirants prepare themselves for the group discussion and personal interview and help them through all related problems they may have. Most aspirants are currently spending anything between Rs 1-2 lakhs in class 11-12 at various coaching centres. We intend to completely de-commercialize this sector, because we believe spending so much money on coaching centres, who do not even guarantee jobs, is necessary.” “We have tied up with Hemsheela Model School in Durgapur and DAV Durgapur to help prepare IIT aspirants. We are also in talks with other institutes in Eastern India for similar tie-ups. We charge Rs 7,000 per student per year for the mentorship programme. We are available on phone, emails and also meet the students at the institutes where we have tie-ups at present,” informed Nishant Shah, co-founder of Edudigm.
“The results we have achieved are reflective of our innovative model. Just by using the beta version of our technology model, 38 students got into the IITs in 2009,” claimed Agarwal. “Our technology platform - www.targetiit.com - within a year’s time has over 2500 users making it India’s fastest growing web portal for IIT JEE preparations.
