Suneet has pursued BTech in Textile Engineering from IIT Delhi. (Graphic: Abhishek Mitra) Most candidates who take the Common Admission Test (CAT) aspire to pursue an MBA degree. But, 32-year-old Suneet Kumbhat appears in the management entrance exam almost every year as part of his research to become a better teacher for his mentees. The engineer-turned-educator from Mumbai achieved 100 percentile in CAT for the fourth time this year.
Suneet had attempted CAT paper for the first time in 2008 when he was studying engineering at IIT Delhi. He was pursuing B-Tech in Textile Engineering and later decided to appear for the management entrance exam in the final year of his undergraduate degree in 2010. Despite having a score of 99.52 percentile, he didn’t get a call from any of the premier management schools.
After graduating from IIT Delhi, he took up a job at Global Analytics in Chennai as a business analysis in 2011 and kept scoring 99 percentile and above in CAT year-on-year, but was not able to qualify for IIMs.
“Either the verbal ability section didn’t go well or I couldn’t clear the IIM interviews. 2013 was my last attempt. That’s when I hit the bull’s eye and scored 100 percentile for the first time. I always had the knack to do well in the aptitude-based tests but scoring a cent per cent score really boosted my confidence,” said Suneet, who later joined IIM Calcutta for a postgraduate programme (PGP) in Management in 2013.
In 2014, he appeared again for the CAT as a fun bet and ended up scoring 99.98 percentile. That’s when he really thought that he had the right skillset to ace the exam. “My friends and I had a bet and everybody said that I won’t be able to score more than 97 percentile. But, I scored well and missed the 100 percentile score from only a .02 margin. It reaffirmed my belief in my ability to crack the exam,” said the Mumbai boy.
“After IIM degree, I was not ready to go back to the corporate life and started teaching at a CAT coaching centre in Calcutta. Soon after, it became my Zen zone. I was making a decent sum of money while doing what I love and continued teaching even after coming back to Mumbai in 2015,” said Suneet.
His entrepreneurial aspiration led him to establish Kasa Kai Mumbai in 2016 – a community and hobby-driven company to curate experiences for like-minded together. Along with the startup, he continued coaching students for CAT. In 2017, he appeared again for the entrance exam as a teacher to understand the exam pattern better and scored 100 percentile for the second time.
“Teaching comes naturally to me but I still needed to be adept with the latest exam patterns to be able to guide my students better. Since then, I decided to appear for CAT as a research activity for effective teaching,” said Suneet, who achieved 100 percentile in CAT 2018 and 99.9 percentile in CAT 2019.
Amid the pandemic, Suneet joined Unacademy as a CAT coach as “he wanted to carve a niche for himself in the teaching sector”. “I would continue to appear in the entrance exam because I am keen to learn about what I can do to improve myself as a teacher. EdTech platforms are motivating young talent to join the teaching sector,” said the CAT 2021 topper.
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