If you want to make it…

Find a lacuna
If you have a passion for teaching and have always dreamt of making it big on your own, this business is for you. It may not bring in profits at first. But the education sector is poised to boom, and students are always looking out for outside help, so the moolah will come in.

Study the competition
The coaching class industry gets about 200 new players every year, which means the competition is tough. Study the competition in the segment you intend focusing on. Go online - every big tutorial has a website - to get an idea of the processes, practices and fee charged.

Start small, and get a focus
It will help if you have had teaching experience at a school or college, or have given tuitions at home or at another coaching class. You should also specialise to begin with, either in science or commerce. You can later expand to other subjects and streams. You could even negotiate and merge with existing local coaching classes.

Pick a good location
In Mumbai, this is a tough proposition, given the absurdly real estate prices. So zero in on a spot that has a lot of schools and housing colonies.

Get funding
Approach a bank. Unlike in the past, loans are easily available. Remember, this business requires quite a bit of up-front investment -- in real estate, hiring teachers, etc. Once your processes are in place, hire a consultant who can advise you on how to expand, corporatise your operation and get foreign funding.

Be smart about hiring
You cannot possibly hire every teacher or employee, so you need to choose your section heads very carefully. These heads can then hire people in their own departments. But just so that everyone is on the same page, you need to make sure that the department heads know the core values of the company and have the necessary tools to evaluate and recruit people.

Innovate
You need to think about how to make studying fun. This means you need to work out your pedagogy and then buy the tools need to put the methods into practice. This may include audio-visual aids, online lessons, films, etc.