[Open Conversation] What is the final solution?

While it is possible to do classes in online mode, having bunch of people around studying and with common goal helps, so the need for offline at least in the beginning year of preparation.

And if things are good ,then things become crowded.

We thought that we will get people selected from a residential academy. We succeeded in parts. We thought we will make a less congested Rajinder Nagar. And with the fall of ORN, we need to rethink if we even want another Rajinder Nagar.

The basement issue is over. No classes of Forum will be held in basements.

If you and other people think that SFG is expensive that we'll close that as well. It won't be possible to run it. Because it will require us to have large seating capacity. And SFG in onlin mode wont work for many students.

Interview videos i think are harmless and don't even attract views.

If IAPL house which is built on 1400 yards with four sides space for movmenet of vehicle can't be firesafe, then we can't have any building with fire safety.

It's a 120 crore building and it's fire safety has been set up and audited three times in five years. Approximately 7-8 lakhs have been spent in May 2024 also for the same.

It has two quote broad exit gates meeting / exceeding the fire safety norms. The sprinkler system is in place very much and separate tank for fire readymess exists.

You can see the ports if you look closely at the ceiling. The pipes have been hideen by false ceiling , but the points of water exit are there dropping out from false ceiling.

Wood or ply is not the construction material keeping in mind fire safety.

Some of the students who were complaining no time for self study, did you ask them why they did not do self study in 2-3 years?

Large number of students are preparing for UPSC for several years, but if you take a look at their books, they have not even read end to end multiple times.

Regarding reviews, if you have level 1 problems, then you will get level 1 feedback. As you improve, a discussion with mentors should help you track problems that youbhave solved.

I would given your words due weight if you had commented from your actual account. Why did you need to create an account 15 minutes ago to do this?

Your suggestions have been taken. It inspires more trust if you could comment from actual ID.

That's all.

Please dont think of me as selfish or anything. But hear me out.

We have 700+ students in final list from various programs. We dont highlight or advertise this because we generally get good word of mouth from our selected students, and also we want to grow slow, not so fast.

And we started getting good ranks like 1,3,5,7 in second year of our program when our base was of less than 400 students. This is because with less number of students, you are able to focus better and get good results. You don't get great revenue, but you get your dopamines.

This year 20+ from all top 30 ranks students after service allocation ( IAS closed at 78 , IPS started at 79 ), have joined Forum. It is not easy to sastisfy them and the level of effort to satisfy someone who already knows things is much higher than, lets say teaching a fresher.

We get good results because we are not localised and we are getting India's best. We tried regional centers, but what was our learning was that in regional centers people who have not done college or even 12th class folks are coming from class. Now someone who is bright with let us say 8 or 9+ CGPA will manage probably both college and civils prep, but average student will not.

And that means you have to teach him more. But if you teach him more, then the bright kid will run away.

You look at interview of Hindi medium Arpit with me on Forum ( Tete a tete wala talk ). He said without taking name that Srishti ias is faltu. I asked why - he said they teach in 2 years , by when student money or energy will be gone.

But Srishti IAS problem is that lot of weak students join them, also because they dont do ( or cant do much research or worse - they dont know anyone who has cleared the exam ) , so they have to teach A,B,C,D also.

And because Arpit is bright, Srishti IAS will not suit him at all. 

So that way they are not wrong. ( Not defending, just explaining ).

Forum people will get a kick ( enjoyment ) when the results will be good, because that is the model for us. Like if we claim result ( but dont have it such as IGP etc., we end up having a terrible time ) 

Now when we did residential and I asked the bright kids - both those who cleared and those who did not - what they felt good about the place - they said sir the crowd is good here. Its like people are studying like mad.

When we started academy, we did not want to be a teaching company - like teaching 20,000 students and having 200 faculty and no results. We wanted to train the student so that he clears on his own. and that you can do by that 7Am discipline thing, making people write AWFG and value addition with CA class and all that after the basics is done.

And we cant copy that everywhere.

You goto Bangalore and ask the student what he wants to do - He'll say by next year my goal is either get promotion or clear UPSC. Now UPSC is a bit tough exam . It will require 110% from you. At least for most people. With that kind of divided attention its difficult to get result. 

In short, if you want results, don't scale much and keep it small. If you want to, however, ensure profitability, then scale - but don't expect result. At least not because of your contribution.Then like Best IAS, you buy the result or you make program free for interview students and treat ranks separately and rest of your students as bank. That is  the engineering coaching model.  Someone rightly said that you have to be clear with your goals. I think it was ganeshgiatonde or iasmocks. It is not that I will let the organisation sink. If we have trouble being profitable we will scale, but that will be as last resort only, not the first.

We learned a lot from residential because half the job was to get students and bring some competition and let them study and crack. We didnt get great results, but we got probably 40+ in total from over 100 students to clear prelims. And that probably is a good number for us.

In fact I was asking a student yesterday in library if 30+ people got through prelims or not , he was like not nodding his head. I was a bit perturbed, if people have falsely said that they cleared prelims. 

So a lil agitated I dropped him a mail 

Now, if you will notice that yellow part, how the student has said that there people are quietly preparing without blabbering etc. It means that small minority is studying. If you are blabbering about prep and studies, it means you are not. 

And the reason is that they are studying because others around them are studying. And these people have cleared prelims after like 3-4 attempts, so they dont want to lose out on anything at all.

**Also they were able to clear because they were screened for it. It's not like anyone can just pay and join courses. And they were from all states North East, West, Chennai, Vijaywada, Pondicherry, Bihar, Bengal, KTK and what not. It is impossible to do it in regional centers. Also it is difficult to create that atmosphere where relationship between coaching and student is only transactional, which happens when people aren't staying around the place.**

**

See out of the various feelings that guide action - such as greed, fear, guilt, shame - greed is the weakest emotion. I mean people wont study because they are greedy about IAS. they will study because they know someone who is studying and feel bad about it. In short, you need to create an atmosphere. I mean people in IIT do well not because IIT is teaching them something, its because there are other good people around.

And you see this, just as I was writing this post I got this.

You need to have good students with a fair competition. This system may not be good for everyone, and frankly at one point the student above was all anxious and in give up mode. It happens when you have written 4 prelims, and you fail in all 4. But somehow this year he managed to clear Prelims, and look the focus he is having now. Extremely precise and methodical.

I think that this year in SFG we wont allow people who have written 2 SFGs and not cleared prelims, because clearly it has not worked for them, and they will waste their money and our feedback will also get bad. Also for SFG we end up expanding classrooms and increase expenses, and then get into trouble financially.

Also some sort of screening mechanism should be there for other courses too so that a homoegenous crowd is there, then we can extract results from them. But if we get very heterogenous people, some having 50% in 10th with someone having 95%, someone who can write poetry sitting with someone who cannot write 1 page about himself, then the whole batch performance becomes poor. 

A lot of people do not realise that no one living within city can say anything against municipalities. I mean you could be Amitabh Bachchan or an SRK. But if you complain about BMC, next day they will break your boundary because certain law from 1891 says that house boundary should not exceed 4 feet. You could say things against the State Govt, sometimes even the Union, but not against .

Current building laws allow coaching  only on GF and FF. But right now they are allowing on higher floors. But that can change anytime. Also the law is not clearly written anywhere, but this year May ( I met@Tata  and did not know that the popular member was from classes , so when he messaged I called him to MCD office to witness first hand the power of bureaucracy - and after the meeting he decided it was better to be a bureaucrat ). So when I argued before the court that nothing in Master Plan stops us ( I had spent 3 days underlining and going through it ) , the DC cited some other clause where something else was written.. So in Master plan also different things are written in different places.. so state is free to use clause which is convenient to them. 

And for GF and First Floor, you will have to outbid Tanishq, Haldiram, Maruti, Hyundai Kalyan Jewellers etc. In our building Best IAS was able to outbid Haldiram ( a 6000 crore turnover company ) , so Haldiram shifted. 

It isnt for nothing they say that fact is stranger than fiction. 

Yes there are two exits. You can view the building from backside. Or go where the gensets are kept. You will see emmergency exit staircases. In fact theives used it to climb to our floor and cut copper piping of the AC. So for a week or so AC in common and staff area was not working and we didnt know why it was not working.

The way things are, and with people losing their lives, it's not worth it coming to Delhi for preparation.

But what else is the solution.

The point of GGN expansion was to have a place similar to ORN so that students do not feel a massive difference, minus the clutter and congestion.

But with the tragedy that has unfolded, things change. Forever. 

Classrooms are made in basement to have sound insulation and save costs. It is also true that roads get waterlogged, and after todays rain, it was scary to think that if someone touched a pole or a wire or a gate that would be in touch with a exposed cable.

Finding a classroom in a more ventilated space - the only option is to have it in Sahara Mall or Vipul Agora mall. Also to meet the safety standards they have to be out and out commercial properties - which would mean, in the case of GGN it would require a travel by the auto.

The conventional model of coaching is to have it near walking distance to save time. That was the whole idea of residential. or even coaching. Travelling far away from your home to a place, not with the goal of taking an auto to travel to coaching classes.

We will probably have to have something within 5 kilometers range of where things are currently. Also when landlords will make property meeting such standards, it will cost nearly 2.5 times. We will have to let go of many students with that kind of fee escalation to factor in the costs.

In fact, every single property will be violative of some municipal law, which opens it to sealing by some or other agency. 

Already the landlords in ORN and the whole adjoining area has increased rents of other floors dividing the rent of the basement among the existing tenants, so do not be surprised of this 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/after-the-raus-ias-tragedy-upsc-aspirants-find-themselves-in-a-new-plight-exorbitant-library-charges/articleshow/112159984.cms

There are so many compliances that there will always be some compliance we will not be able to meet. Its a structural problem which we cannot solve. Or solve at a cost that will make things super unaffordable.  Or we only get rich kids, who may not deliver the results.

Some students have reached out offering  college buildings to be used for classes. Some people from Akshardham temple committee had come who have large campuses for such works and have showed interest in providing cheap accommodation for aspirants in Gujarat. Let us see what the future holds. 

I do not have a holier than thou attitude. I am clearing saying there is a problem. And we're a part of it. And there is a major part we cannot solve because only the state has the capacity to solve it. And solving the city's infra problem will require taxpayer's money, not student's fees.

We have none. Don't know of any.

Where do you live ?

There are 3 major safety protocols that need to be followed for safety in classrooms as per law

1. Two gates - entry and exit gates wide enough on each floor

2. Setting up network of water sprinklers in the class with separate water tank for fire

3. Adequate fire extinguishers as recommended by DFS 

All the above are in place in all classrooms where the size is above 100 yards.

No FIRE Noc is needed for floors on L1 and L2 as per DFS in case of any event, the height of building is low enough to facilitate emmergency rescue.

NOC is issued to buildings and not to coachings. Commercial buildings where we hold classes are built as per the building code