MUMBAI: While a lot has been written about how senior IIT faculty earn half the salary that their freshly minted students do, here's a shocker: faculty at some of India's well-known IIT coaching classes earn a whopping Rs 2 crore per annum. That's 50 to 100 times more than the compensation for IIT teachers.

"The highest salary that a teacher can earn at our institute is Rs 2 crore per annum. This includes their performance-related bonus. And this is all in white money," says Vivek Khanna, vice president, Resonance, a Kota-based coaching centre which recently entered the Mumbai market.

They're not the only ones who pay a hefty packet for faculty. IITian's Pace, a Mumbai-based coaching class, coughs up Rs 70-80 lakh per annum for some its highest-paid teachers.

While FIIT-JEE, another IIT coaching class, would not reveal its compensation figures, Harsh Gupta, FIIT-JEE's admission head in Mumbai, says the industry fixes its pay scales based on FIIT-JEE salaries.

These institutions say that good faculty are the pillars of their industry, and they are willing to pay to retain their staff. But earning that sort of money is not an easy task.

"We run on pure capitalism. Our salaries are based on the competency of the teacher. Performance-related bonuses form a large part of the salary. Our students regularly fill out assessment forms for the faculty. Our faculty have to appear for tests in their subjects every month. A faculty member who tops the test is made the head of department for a particular subject," says Khanna.

"If a single parent complains about a teacher at our coaching class, we send the teacher a show-cause notice."

source: TOI