Test prep and exam coaching platforms

Cracking the exam, from JEE coaching to exams taken abroad

Most engineering graduates remember preparing for an entrance exam: JEE, or a state exam such as MHT CET or KCET. Many prepared with a coaching institute, a series of mock tests, or a teacher on YouTube. Preparing students for exams is one of India's largest education businesses. It has also become one of the country's largest consumer internet businesses.

The exams. Every year, millions of Indian students take competitive exams, in which only a small share win a place:

Engineering

JEE, for the IITs, NITs and many other colleges, and state entrance exams.

Medicine

NEET, for MBBS and other medical courses. More than two million students sit it each year.

Government jobs

the civil services exam, and exams for bank, railway and other government jobs.

Law and management

entrance exams for law schools and business schools.

How coaching works. Coaching began in classrooms. Towns such as Kota, in Rajasthan, grew around coaching institutes, where students moved for one or two years to prepare. A coaching company sells a course for one exam, usually for a year or two, to a group of students called a batch. The course includes:

live classes and recorded lectures
study material and practice questions
mock tests: full practice exams under exam conditions, with a rank among all the students who take them
doubt solving: answers to each student's questions

What a coaching course includes: a course for one exam, sold to a batch of students for a year or two, with live classes, study material, mock tests ranked against everyone who takes them, and doubt solving. AI models now answer doubts at any hour and make practice questions for each student's weak points.

How it moved online. Online coaching made the same course far cheaper, because one teacher could teach lakhs of students at once. It grew fast during the COVID-19 pandemic, when classrooms closed. When they reopened, many online companies shrank and cut staff. Today the business is a mix. Online companies have opened physical centres, and the old classroom institutes have built online arms.

From the classroom to the phone and back: coaching began in classrooms in towns such as Kota, moved online where one teacher could teach lakhs of students, and is now a mix. ALLEN Digital and Infinity Learn are the online arms of classroom institutes, and PW (PhysicsWallah) grew from a YouTube channel into its own centres.

Exams abroad and the exam itself. Two other businesses sit beside Indian coaching:

Test preparation for foreign and professional exams

Examples are the exams for admission to American universities, and the licensing exams that doctors, nurses and accountants must pass before they may practise.

Running and proctoring exams

Proctoring means supervising an exam to stop cheating. Online proctoring watches the candidate through the webcam and the screen, and AI flags anything suspicious.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments:

India's exam coaching: online coaching for Indian entrance and government exams

Exams abroad and the exam itself: preparation for foreign and professional exams, tutoring, and the running of exams

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India's exam coaching
Exams abroad and the exam itself

India's exam coaching

Online coaching for engineering, medical and government entrance exams, live classes, mock tests, doubt solving

The large coaching companies

ALLEN Digital

with engineers in Bengaluru, is the online arm of ALLEN, the coaching institute from Kota. It offers live classes, mock tests, and AI that answers students' doubts. ALLEN Digital has the most job postings in this Market Segment.

PW (PhysicsWallah)

with engineers in Delhi and Bengaluru, grew from a YouTube channel into one of India's largest coaching companies. It teaches millions of students at low fees, online and in its own centres. Its shares have been traded on the stock market since 2025.

Unacademy

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs live classes for dozens of exams.

Vedantu

whose company name is Vedantu Innovations, has engineers in Bengaluru. It runs live online tutoring.

Infinity Learn

with engineers in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, is the online arm of the Sri Chaitanya schools.

Coaching for particular exams

Toprankers

prepares students for law and management entrance exams.

DailyRounds / Marrow

with engineers in Bengaluru, prepares doctors for NEET PG, the exam for places in postgraduate medical courses. (More on it in Market Segment 22.2, AI medical scribes and clinical documentation, in Industry Vertical 22, Digital health.)

Four more companies work in this area: MathonGo, Prep Study, Think2Exam and studyix.

Exams abroad and the exam itself

Test preparation for foreign and professional exams, tutoring, exam proctoring and assessment

Preparing for exams abroad

Kaplan

with engineers in Bengaluru, prepares students for American admissions and professional exams. These include the GRE for graduate school, the GMAT for business school, the MCAT for medical school, and the bar exams that lawyers must pass.

UWorld

with engineers in Hyderabad, sells question banks: large sets of practice questions with explanations. Doctors, nurses and accountants use them to prepare for their licensing exams.

Uniprep

in Bengaluru, is another company in this area.

Tutoring

Varsity Tutors (Nerdy)

with engineers in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune, matches American students with live tutors.

Running and proctoring the exam

Meazure Learning

with engineers in Kolkata, runs and proctors exams for certification bodies: the organisations that test and certify professionals. (More on it in Market Segment 4.2, Identity and access management (IAM), in Industry Vertical 4, Cybersecurity.)

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment also works here:

Xponentium India

with engineers in Bengaluru, makes AI proctoring tools. (More on it in Market Segment 12.6, Hiring assessment and interview platforms, in Industry Vertical 12, HR tech.)

The tutor in every phone.

India's coaching industry was built on star teachers and crowded classrooms. AI models now answer every student's doubt at any hour, in Hindi or English. They also create practice questions matched to each student's weak points. The cheapest coaching, the kind PW built, is the most threatened by this, and also has the most to gain.

That is the exam business: coaching for India's entrance and government exams, preparation for exams abroad, and the software that runs the exam itself. Much of it has moved from the classroom to the phone.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What edtech companies hire for.

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