MUMBAI/JAIPUR: That the IIT coaching sector is one of the country's most profitable is well known. But there is also a cottage industry that feeds off coaching classes, one that deals with the buying and selling of top rankers at the joint entrance exam ( JEE ).For over a month, TOI tracked one such ''broker'' trading in students, a man named Vishnu Agarwal from Kota, a dusty town in Rajasthan that has become the IIT coaching capital of India. He ''sells'' top rankers from one class to another for a fee.Agarwal 's modus operandi is simple. He first zeroes in on the brightest students from the bestknown IIT coaching classes who are most likely to clear the JEE. He then approaches other coaching classes in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi and offers them the opportunity to administer their test series to these students. Once the JEE results are declared, the coaching class can include those who appeared for their test series as part of the total number of students from their institute who made it to the IITs. The test series is free of cost for students, who are sometimes even paid to write these tests. The coaching class pays Agarwal for the service.Agarwal even claims that, for Rs 6 lakh, he can provide new entrants in the IIT coaching sector with the entire academic plan of well-known coaching classes such as Bansal in Kota. According to Agarwal, around 1,000 coaching classes in India use Bansal's content, much of which is provided by him. He claims he has clients in Bihar, UP and Chattisgarh, among other states.He operates from a plush locality in Kota's Talwandi colony, with three cellphones and a laptop. One of his mobile numbers is registered in Mumbai while the other number is registered in Kota. He would not reveal the third number.The matter came to light when Agarwal contacted IITians Pace , a popular coaching class in Mumbai, and offered to ''sell'' it some top-rankers from the biggest names in Kota's coaching industry. TOI worked alongside Praveen Tyagi , MD of IITians Pace, to expose Agarwal. Our reporters approached him from Mumbai and Jaipur.Tyagi first put TOI's Mumbai correspondent on a conference call with Agarwal, where he discussed his business model and how he would produce top rankers for Pace's test series.TOI then phoned Agarwal from Mumbai posing as Tyagi's secretary, Sonal, and discussed plans to take the deal forward. The conversation was recorded. Agarwal said he could provide 30-40 candidates from three classes in Kota (Bansal, Resonance and Vibrant) who would definitely score a rank below 100 at JEE. Each of thes student would come for Rs 10,000. He said he could also provide a few more kids who would probably make it to the IITs, but with a rank above 100. These, he said, would cost only Rs 5,000 per head. He said that in addition to his own fee, he would also have to pay students some money to appear for the tests.