Bidding adieu to the architect of Kota Factory who made Kota a national brand for IIT-JEE coaching

The ‘Bhishma Pitamah’ of India’s coaching industry, a dedicated teacher, an exceptional maths wizard, an IIT engineer, and a strong-willed fighter who did not let a genetic disease of muscular dystrophy overpower him, Vinod Kumar Bansal, is no more to render his excellence. The man who started from a tuition class in his living room by teaching around eight students was behind putting the small industrial Rajasthan town of Kota at the very core of the country’s education map today.

On Monday around 3 am, the 71-year-old pioneer of the Kota coaching industry and the chairman of Bansal Classes passed away after a cardiac arrest and longstanding battle with muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease from which he was diagnosed when he was around 25. Although Bansal had tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to the hospital recently, his reports had returned negative a few days ago. His son, Samir Bansal informed that his father’s lungs had already been damaged due to muscular dystrophy and coronavirus further deteriorated his condition. Bansal is survived by his wife and three children.

Bansal’s unfortunate demise was condoled by the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla who said that his death was an irreparable loss for the academic fraternity in its entirety.

“The demise of Bansal Classes director V K Bansal ji is an irreparable loss for the entire academic fraternity. He dedicated all his life to the education and progress of students. Thousands of students taught by him are making India proud globally. May his soul rest in peace,” Birla, Lok Sabha Speaker, and Kota-Bundi MP, tweeted in Hindi.

Creation of Bhishma Pitamah

Born on 26 October 1949 in Jhansi district of Uttar Pradesh, Vinod Kumar Bansal studied mechanical engineering at IIT-Banaras Hindu University and joined J K Synthetics in Kota in the early ’70s. Just a few years later in 1974 his entire body became paralyzed when he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, which eventually impaired his physical movement, and was also predicted to shorten his lifespan.

As recalled by A K Tiwari, a retired senior vice-president from Bansal Classes in 2019, “after a doctor from the United Kingdom suggested that instead of trying to find a cure, which was difficult, he should focus on finding a way to utilize his time. He suggested teaching maths. That idea stuck.” Later in 1983, he met G.D. Agrawal of Mumbai, who also suggested that he should start coaching students for the entrance test for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT JEE). Subsequently, he started teaching students, initially with 8 students at his dining-room table. Within a year or two around 50 out of 70 students started getting selected in IIT, which spread the word and more students wanted to join. In 1991 he founded Bansal Classes.

Kota has since then emerged at the heart of the coaching industry in India, with approximately 150,000 students enrolling in the 40 coaching institutes in Kota from all over India. 39,000 students from Kota cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) in 2017 and over 48 of them were in the top 100. He died on 3 May 2021 of a heart attack after testing positive for Covid19.

The One Who Realised Students’ Dreams

Vinod Kumar Bansal’s son, Samir Bansal, who is now the managing director of Bansal Classes, said in a statement, “He was the architect of Kota’s coaching industry…For 35 years, he did not think about anything other than his students… He is also an inspiration for those suffering from a disease… As we battle a pandemic, we can all learn from his positive attitude.”

Bansal was a jovial person who conducted tambola for his students on New Year's Eve and a dedicated teacher who lived for his students.

The fee structure of institutes in Kota up until the early 2000s followed the Bansal model. “When he was taking tuitions, he did it for free. In the late ’80s, the father of one of his students who had cleared the IIT exams gave him an envelope with some cash. He refused at first but later realized that teaching could be a career option if he lost his job. But he felt conscious asking for money, so the same parent devised a fee structure for his classes. All centers in Kota followed that fee structure for years,” says AK Tiwari.

Manthan Dalmia, a first-year student at IIT Delhi, recalls Bansal’s dedication towards his students, “He once denied admission to a politician’s daughter who did not clear the entrance exam. He even made the politician wait because he was in the middle of a class. He never wasted a student’s time.”

An Irreplaceable Loss

Govind Maheshwari, director of Allen Career Institute says, “It was his fresh vision that made a subject like maths interesting… Lakhs of students will remember his contribution.”

The demise of the ‘Bhishma Pitamah’ of India’s coaching industry in a way, points towards the end of an era for Kota’s coaching industry and an irreplaceable loss of the entire academic fraternity.

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