In December last year, Shubham Goyal, a Class 12 student, quit his FIITJEE coaching classes at Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh branch and decided to prepare for the Joint Entrance Exam Mains at home. It wasn’t a deliberate choice but a compulsion as no classes were being held due to mass resignations by teachers and the company’s financial difficulties.”Several teachers complained that they had not received salaries since June 2024,” Goyal told FE over a call.
Goyal’s peers in many other branches didn’t have better luck, leaving them and their parents in confusion and anger.
On Friday, FE visited five of FIITJEE centres across Delhi and found that no classes are being held in Janakpuri and Laxmi Nagar centres. The ones in Dwarka, Punjabi Bagh and Kalu Sarai, are barely running.
Around 25 teachers have resigned in the last few months, citing mismanagement and salary delays. In the Kalu Sarai branch alone, 18 teachers have resigned including three head of departments and their deputies.
Around 10 centres have shut down in Patna, Pune, Noida, Gurugram, Durgapur, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Varanasi, and Bhopal in the last few months.
Many of the teachers who have resigned in the past few weeks have joined its rival Aakash. Most of them have joined Aakash’s new “Advanced Engineering Preparation Programme” under the name “Invictus”, according to updates on their LinkedIn profiles.
Rohit (name changed), who’s enrolled at the Kalu Sarai branch, said that they had received a WhatsApp text from some of the former teachers saying they quit due to “irregular salary payments”.
The message, seen by FE, said, “To ensure uninterrupted academic support, we are fully committed to your success and are now available at Aakash South Extension and Aakash Vasant Kunj”.
Similar texts have been sent to students in Meerut, Noida, Dwarka and Gurugram as well. For the students of Meerut Centre, the text also said, “We collectively have resigned from FIITJEE services and joined Aakash Institute’s newly launched IITJEE Advance wing ‘Invictus- Advanced Engineering Programme’ at Meerut where both faculty and student will be benefited”.
In response, FIITJEE has sent out clarifications to some of the students. At the Dwarka centre, the message said the centre is “going to continue even stronger”. At Gurugram, it said, “Very soon, we will restore teaching at the Gurugram Centre, and you be assured that your studies will continue in such a manner that you will perform at your optimum best”.
That’s small consolation for thousands of parents who are worried about the future of their children. “We have paid Rs 7 lakh for tuition fee and accommodation for our son,” said Renu Singh, mother of a JEE aspirant who studies in Class 11. “Even if the money is not refunded, I don’t want my child to study from anyone but the top faculty. We are not getting any response from them”.
Another parent, who did not wish to be named, said, “I have paid Rs 4.5 lakh for my son’s admission here. The last payment was made in December. It is very unethical to shut the centre close to board and JEE Mains exams,” he said.
FE tried reaching out to FIITJEE on numbers and email ID mentioned on the company’s website but did not receive any response.
FIITJEE’s financial troubles seem to have started in 2021-22 and 2022-23. After a tough 2018-19, when it reported a loss of Rs 135.6 crore, the company reported profits of Rs 20.2 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 57.1 crore in 2020-21.
However, profit fell to Rs 40 lakh in 2021-22. In 2022-23, it reported a net loss of Rs 71 crore, according to the company’s financial statements sourced via data intelligence platform Tracxn. The company’s Ebitda margin also slipped into negative in 2022-23. The company has not reported its financial results for 2023-24 yet.
Last year, an email sent by Dinesh Kumar Goel, the founder and managing director of FIITJEE, to company’s employees leaked online, leading to a widespread uproar. “Salary is not a matter of right, it needs to be earned by doing what is expected of you to do,” he had said in the mail.
Despite the financial troubles, FIITJEE continued with its advertisements on expansion plans. According to its website, it aims to take its number of branches from 74 to 199 by 2029. In an advertisement last year, it had invited applications for faculty members for its main company as well as schools.
According to a former teacher, who has now moved to Unacademy, the first notice of salary delays was received in February 2023. “We did not think it was that big a trouble then. But as time passed, we knew it was a mess.”
That should sound like an understatement to the parents and students.