Some of the truth about this guy. Sandeep Gupta, top 1% class.
He used to claim about getting Stanford admit, so someone has emailed them, then he removed that claim from all his advertising. ref image
https://i.imgur.com/EsvVdRo.png In the late 90s he started his career by teaching CAT at a small time institute in Bhopal. He was earning perhaps 10-20K per month. He was a nobody. But what was impressive was his ability to memorise word meanings and do some random mental maths. A famous incident was about how a girl's parent walked into his class and slapped him in front of everyone for having an affair with the girl. This was told to me last year by his then-student in Bhopal who I got to know in Bangalore.
In early 2000s, he switched to another CAT coaching company briefly before joining a company based out of Delhi where he got to the GMAT/GRE side of the world. Over here he was notorious for having relations with his students. Again this was known to all including the CEO - he was warned but somehow tolerated as he was a good teacher. This was told to me by this company's senior director who has been with them for over 15years.
Around 2008 he pulled a fast one - he went to a competitor and told I will not only teach but also get you students. He not only made the competitor's founder sit in his class as a demo student but also gave her the entire database. This and other irregularities (affair with students) led them to throw him out. Not sure why/how but things did not work out even with the competitor. This was told to me by his colleague in that company.
In 2009 he started his own company and sent an email making preposterous claims. This is a mail dated 27-May-2009 (still have it in my inbox). I was forwarded this email by a friend. This is when I heard his name for the first time. Most of his claims have remained but here is another thing he has put in that email: "GMAT Score of 800 (perfect score) with an essay grade of 6 ... earlier scores: 790, 780, 780 (score report attached). I am the second person to get the perfect score in India (12 years back, an Indian got 800 in the paper-and-pencil format of the GMAT)”
In 2010, he then approached a Bangalore CAT company famous for its large front-page TOI ad for a partnership (I will run your GMAT business) and asked them to put out an expensive TOI ad where his name would be prominently told. After the ad was launched (even had a legal agreement with them) he asked them for the email ids of the people who registered through the ad. Unsuspectingly they gave him the database. He simply mailed them 2 days before the course start date and said I am running my own place where I will teach better and charge less. The CAT company (now very famous in Bangalore and into 10th-12th coaching as well) didn’t know what to do and decided to cut losses & pull away. This was personally told to me by the founder of the CAT coaching company - under whose name the company runs.
From 2011 to 2013 he started putting his own quarter page ads in Bangalore TOI spending lakhs, filled up an auditorium of students, impressed them with his claims and got his ROI. He quickly had Bangalore's largest GMAT classes. He even did this for GRE but decided not to continue as the ROI wasn't as much there (maybe working people taking the GMAT are more trusting as opposed to smartypants college students taking the GRE
). I know this because I was following him during this time and would find his ads very amusing for the claims they made.
GMAC were furious - not only were his ads scammy (claims of having scored 800) but he also started giving pdfs of
OG on his blog. In these ads he also claimed some 400+ students with scores above 760 on the GMAT. The company he worked for earlier put pressure on GMAC. GMAC in turn took it up with TOI Delhi & threatened legal case against TOI for carrying such ads. The Chief Editor in TOI assured them that TOI will blacklist this company and henceforth there would be no ads. The same was informed to the sales staff at TOI Bangalore. He then went to TOI Goa and made the TOI sales guy there put an ad in the Bangalore edition (billed in Goa but to be displayed in Bangalore). This time GMAC again went to TOI and TOI made sure that his ads would never come in any of their editions. Because of this he had to finally changed the name of his company to the current one and also tone down his claims in print ads. This was told to me by the GMAC representative who was working on this case with TOI.
A very reputed US based firm was also exploring legal options when they realised that he simply ripped their material, put it on his blog and started claiming they were genuine GMAT questions (this is the 700-800 document). But they realised how feeble copyright laws were in India and dropped it completely. This was told to me by an instructor of the said American company (who btw HAS a real 800 on the GMAT - anyone preparing for the GMAT perhaps know his name as he has been active on forums such as BTG for many years).
Cut to 2014 - Somewhere along the way he realised he could rake in more moolah by BS-ing (he essentially puts forth points gleamed from various management books as his own). He started a venture in 2012 (something similarly named - top1% or something but I forget) but it failed. Post that he underwent training with a famous public speaker called Andy Harrington. He has a scribd document claiming to get paid $25,000 per hour from the CEO for a Fortune 500 company for his “advice”. You can google for this document - pretty funny.
Source :
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments ... rreacting/