TCY's Unique Methodology Quietly Changing the Entire Exam Prep Sector

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LUDHIANA, Punjab, January 28, 2019/PRNewswire/ --
With the CAT results out two weeks back, the TCY headquarters at Ludhiana received a lot of appreciation calls. These were not only from students, but also from coaching centres preparing students for CAT.



(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/814173/KamalWadheraTCYonline.jpg )

It all started in 2012 after fierce brainstorming sessions at TCY headquarters. The IT, Content, Academic Research teams and the faculty members were proud of the tremendous strides that they were taking due to their Unique Methodology which made sure that the company could match the unpredictability of the CAT, to enable students in large numbers to taste success in their first go. After all, it had taken them years to develop and refine this methodology.

However, Kamal Wadhera, Founder & CEO, TCYonline, decided to take a tectonic shift from a proven expansion strategy that was already giving the company fast growth and dominance in the region.

Kamal and his team decided to see other coaching centres as partners rather than competition and transfer their cherished methodology to them. With one of the brightest teams in the sector and a methodology developed over a decade's toil, Kamal felt there was a need to reach a much larger audience and to create a real impact in the sector which the then existing model would not have delivered. The expansion model till then was that of increasing the number of company-owned and franchised centres. Leaving behind the risks and challenges in the short term, viz, an immediate drop in revenue, unable to open franchise outlets, staying in oblivion for long or entirely failing in the new model, TCY realized there wasn't a better time than this.

The team was slowly able to empathise with most coaching centres and could feel the pain points of running a local coaching centre which TCY once was. They could see that it was virtually impossible for the teacher to scan and research and even predict the paper trends without a full-fledged research team as TCY had then. The questions asked of the team were:

TCY has 100+ full-time researchers working with them. Would it be possible for a standalone institute to do so?
With tests going online, copyright issues could land coaching centres in a soup and original copyrighted content again would need research and development; hence deep pockets. Could they feel this pressure?
TCY had developed a specialized ERP for centre management which took them almost a decade, to smoothen centre operations for optimum utilization of all resources including human. Should they invest even a single rupee more on this & reinvent for partners use?
Is it easy for coaching centres to find and retain full-time designers for local marketing needs?
Above all, today when every student expects two basic things every day - complete personalized learning and national benchmarking on every topic, every chapter and every test; is it possible for these coaching centres to do that fast before they lose their market share?
To develop such a vast platform and to get deep analytics with millions of question attempts before students get all this, an investment of crores will be required by a coaching centre. Is it easy?
The roadmap was becoming clearer to the team and they rose from the final session with a new determination and a new mission.

Fast-forward to today, TCY is serving over 600 coaching centres that swear by TCY's methodology, which is proving to be a life-changing experience for the students.

What is TCY's unique methodology?

For a student joining a TCY powered coaching centre, from day-1, a certified teacher takes class on a standardized lecture that is streamed from the head quarters. The respective teacher gets in her panel 48 hours in advance the lecture slides through which the class ought to be taught along with the objectives of the lesson. The students are expected to demonstrate proficiency in these in the assessment tests post every lecture.
This lecture slideshow leads students to specific page numbers of TCY books to be referred for post-class practice.
The books have QR codes providing access to detailed explanations, resources and tests for complete practice.
Students then take mock tests on official interface which provides official scoring to give a near-to-actual score.
The analytics engine analyses weak areas and assigns customized remedial tests for the student. The teacher is already armed with a report on each student's weak areas while she helps them improve.
Coaching centres are sent daily reports regarding which teachers should take extra classes of which students in what improvement areas.
This methodology is really turning the fortunes of students as well as coaching centres. The company is aggressively investing on academic research and technology infusion to make the learning experience more effective. The academic, operations and promotion hassles of coaching centres are vanishing and they are able to meet the requirements of a modern student effectively.

Ravneet Singh Gandhi of CET King, Mumbai speaks, "We have been using TCY platform since Feb 2016. It is safe to say that TCY is the leader in online testing for competitive exams. I would recommend TCY to all coaching classes who want to have that extra edge. The tests are very relevant, continuously updated, high in quality and run on near-to-actual interface to give the students a complete test experience. Tools like test generator and study planner along with remedial testing customize the learning experience of students. We have subscribed to TCY for MBA & Banking. TCY team is always prompt in resolving any issue and helping students. We hope they will set a new bar of expectations every time." It is worth mentioning that in recently declared CAT results, CET King has over 1,200 IIM calls with over 100 students who are 95+ percentilers.

Kulbhushan Sharma, a verbal expert at TCY and a 100 percentiler himself in recent CAT exams multiple times, shares, "I had heard this phrase - turning things on their head - but I saw it here in action at TCY occasionally. During my 15 year stint with TCY, I haven't seen such a compelling vision and a commitment to stay ahead of the curve. Readiness to sacrifice the present for the future, taking the right risks at the right time and building a company to last - I am experiencing everything."

Ajai Shankar, TCM, Allahabad quotes, "In-depth Analysis by TCYonline has been very helpful in providing the best preparation to our CAT students. It is a must-have tool for teachers to improve their students' performance, particularly in highly competitive exams like CAT. Excellent support provided."

According to Amit Kumar who is an expert for MBA exams with TCY says, "Never did we imagine that from mere 200 students or so for MBA, we'd reach 10,000+ in such a short span. Of course, now we get a small part of student fee per student but the impact of our work has made our team so proud. You name any part of the country and we have MBA students from there, e.g. 3,000 from Mumbai itself, 2,000 from the rest of Maharashtra and Gujarat, over 1,200 from NCR and similarly, hundreds from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, etc."

Sameer Sardana, who runs a MBA coaching centre named iQue Ideas in Ahmedabad says, "Associating with TCY for CAT was one of the best decisions that we took. In depth analysis of the mock tests taken by students is one of the features that really helped the students improve their score. Students get to know their strong and weak areas as well as the time they are taking in attempting a particular question through the analysis feature. It explains students the different areas to improve upon. Overall, it has been a great experience. Many students at our institution used this platform and scored 95+ percentile in CAT 2018."

It'd be pertinent to mention here that MBA is just one of the categories this company covers. Other very popular programs are BetterThink and TCY-K12. These are for English Language and School Exams, respectively.

Gurpreet Kaur who has been handling BetterThink since 2002 has a similar story to tell. "Right from finding the best institute near you for IELTS and PTE to getting your desired result in your hand - everything is so smooth and easy for a student now. More than 300 coaching centres run on BetterThink methodology; 260 in India and the rest abroad. Other than in Dubai, Nepal, Bangladesh and Philippines, our program is very popular in English-speaking countries including Australia and New Zealand. We serve over 25 centres in Australia and New Zealand alone."

Veenu Garg of Malerkotla, Punjab started with one centre for IELTS and PTE preparation and now he's running three more in nearby areas. "It was very easy to start with BetterThink division of TCY which helped me test waters with one centre. The result-oriented methodology with unique focus on remedial testing, rubric-based scoring and reports and other support through the app was a great hit with the students. Our centre started to fill-up fast and it gave me the confidence to open three centres one after the other. BetterThink's simple Centre Management System taught me how to manage four centres easily while keeping a tab on each student's progress. As they say, if you want to give A-class results, you must deliver A-class services every day; regarding this methodology, using is believing," says Veenu.

According to Mukta, who supports the network of TCY, "Since my joining in 2005, I've seen such an amazing boldness and clarity in the organization that every day is fresh, challenging and fun. TCY has given wings to the imagination of students from those cities and towns who didn't have access to high quality coaching. For example, our TCY-K12 program is creating NTSE and Olympiad success stories from all over the country."

Mrs. Anu Sethi is another happy customer and a centre-owner at Ambala. "The TCY-K12 methodology is absolutely brilliant in ensuring that we are able to produce good results in CBSE and Olympiads from day-one. Lecture slides ensure that every teacher is delivering their best and the students have visual cues to enhance learning. The regular testing keeps the students and teachers on their toes and remedial practice ensures that every student performs to their best. The books and the app complete the learning cycle. Overall, a fool-proof system for great results," says Anu.

According to Kamal, "Fortunately, my heroes since my growing up days have been fictional characters like Hank Rearden, Howard Roark and the likes, so I tend to take a very long-term view of things. I'm not that great at Math like many of my colleagues at TCY but I'm always intrigued by the concepts like Chaos theory and Butterfly effect. Go to our platform and try tools like Challenge Zone, Test Generator and Study Planner and you'd automatically realize how a student's mind reactions to daily fears, anxieties, and motivations are addressed so simply. It's not those two hours in the classroom everyday with the student that matter; in fact it's the rest 22 hours that make these 2 hours work. We are associated with students for that one year of their life that changes their trajectory for the balance of their life, so it better be our best work. For us, it's so much fun and so much satisfaction. Refining your platform day-in and day-out is true Nirvana. We can spend all our lives doing the same because there's no end to its depth. There can't be anything more satisfying than - helping people become what they were born to be."

Since the platform TCYonline is working seamlessly for the complete Academic, Operations & Business needs of coaching centres for almost every exam category of India, the company thinks it can easily add 200 to 400 more centres in the next 12 months.

About TCY:

After years of dreaming and brain racking, it was the year 2008 when Team TCY launched the platform http://www.TCYonline.com.

TCY's focus was simple - How can they answer the two basic questions every learner faces every day:

Where does he stand?
What next should he do to succeed?
Every single day since then, a dedicated team of 200+ comprising Academic, Data Science & Tech have been developing and refining algorithms that have solved real educational problems of students and coaching centres. More than 75,000 registered authors are making the content stronger with each passing day. As on date, TCYonline is the only horizontal and platform model in India catering to 190 exam categories, divided amongst 8-9 main groups.

Journey Update:

Serving 600+ Coaching centres in India, New Zealand, Australia, Nepal, Bangladesh, UAE
4.2 million students so far
600,000 students join every year from every nook and corner of the country
Pool of 750,000+ curated and tagged question items
4.3/5 Client Happiness Index (B2B and B2C)
All this with no feet-on street in sales
Source: TCYonline PWR
PWR