After the temples around Mylapore and the shopping market on South Mada Street, the CA coaching centres there attract the most number of people to the locality. One centre is said to have 3,000 students — so, you get the picture?
Luz Avenue and Justice Sundaram Road have a high concentration of such centres. There are around 17 academies in and around Mylapore.
Besides good bus and train connectivity, the fact that the neighbourhood has many accountancy teachers is behind these academies moving into the area.
“Some of us chose institutions on the basis of the faculty they have,” says Nathansha Dilip, a student of Prime Academy who joined the institution “to learn accounts from MPV sir”.
CA aspirants from outside Chennai gravitate towards the centres in Mylapore due to the area’s proximity to Triplicane, which has many mansions.
“Students from other states find the cost of living in Mylapore reasonable. There are many eateries around Kapleeshwarar temple selling food at reasonable rates,” says K. N. Ramaswamy, founder of RR Academy, adding that increasingly many students from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh come here for coaching.
Another reason, he says, has to do with Mylapore having many accounting firms where students can pursue their internship while preparing for various examinations.
The classes in most of these institutions begin as early as 5 a.m. and go up to 9.30 p.m. Based on feedback from students, many of the academies in Mylapore have branched out to Nungambakkam and T.Nagar, which now have a sizeable number of centres. But Mylapore is likely to remain the capital as far as CA coaching goes.
“Mylapore is where everything happens, which include CA coaching,” says Raghavi, faculty co-ordinator of KS Academy. Though the institutes are packed all the time, many prefer weekday classes.
“Most undergraduate students prefer this routine because we juggle between the college and the coaching centre. So, weekends are reserved for college assignments,” says Swetha Ganesh who took coaching at a centre in Mylapore.
