A late entrant into the booming student coaching and tutoring industry, Rati Tehri has come a long way in a short time. Launched only a year ago (November 2006), her sardonically christened website www.totalgadha.com, offering 24/7 coaching and mentoring to B-school entrance exam aspirants, attracts 223,000 visitors per month. “Totalgadha.com has been ranked by Google as India’s #1 website in terms of hits per day and amazon.com confirms our claim of 223,000 eyeballs every month. And it’s a measure of our credibility that Google advertises on our website because of the large number of students — 2,000 everyday — who visit from India and other countries including the US, Germany, Ireland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and Malaysia,” says the Delhi-based Tehri.

A graduate of Delhi University with a BBA from Wigan and Leigh University (India), Tehri was “much less than a topper” at St. Mary’s Academy in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, where she grew up. An attempt to enter an IIM came to naught when she didn’t fare well in the CAT (Common Admission Test). But turning adversity to advantage, she together with a childhood friend Sanjeev Singh, hit upon the idea of developing a website to provide coaching, study material and other relevant information to students preparing for CAT and other B-school entrance exams.

Although she never counted herself among the academically successful, Tehri is a great believer in the virtues of hands-on education. She began her working career as a relationship officer in Kotak Commodities. This was followed by a ten-month stint in IMS Learning Resources (Pvt) Ltd, the well-known coaching institute.

Today she reckons that the user-friendly structure of her website is the secret of its success. The CAT exam learning content is divided into verbal and quantitative sections. The verbal (English) content is prepared by Tehri while her partner Singh prepares the quantitative (maths) section.

With hardly any mass media advertising, totalgadha.com has built its reputation by word-of-mouth publicity and Google ads which direct B-school aspirants to its website. Moreover totalgadha launched its first book — Totalgadha’s Number Systems Book â€” on October 12 for $8 (Rs.315). “Currently we offer coaching only for CAT and GMAT exams. We will soon diversify into online training for SAT, TOEFL, IELTS and school board exams. Our long-term plan is to start brick and mortar coaching schools,” says Tehri.

A great believer in learning from her mistakes, within a record time of 12 months this failed IIM aspirant has turned defeat into a promising enterprise, whose best is yet to come.

Kalpana Misra (Delhi)