The Kota story actually began in the ’90s, when educationist VK Bansal started Bansal Classes. From that one classroom with a handful of students, the coaching scene in Kota has just taken off today. Students from all over the country come here to prepare for JEE or NEET examinations, which help them get into the IITs,” says Raghav Subbu, director of the Netflix show Kota Factory. 

Bansal, who went to the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, suffered from muscular dystrophy later in life and started coaching students in 1991. Thirty years later, Kota in Rajasthan, is an educational hub, with almost 1,50,000 students passing through it every year. The entrance coaching industry in Kota generates business of about Rs 40,000 million. As Subbu says, “We have met so many children who have lived the Kota life. The IIT life itself is so organic to the Indian fabric that somebody had to tell this story, and tell it well.”