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Indeed, a viral post by an IIT Bombay graduate, Aviral Bhatnagar, has brought a heated debate over the skyrocketing price of preschool education in India. Bhatnagar, a founder and managing partner of pre-seed venture fund AJVC, posted on X on February 18, 2026: Her daughter has a UKG fee of over 4L/yr in Mumbai, her cousin told me. At IIT Bombay, I paid half the fee that I paid for the 4 years combined.

That contrast was emphasized by Bhatnagar, who needed only a four-year degree in engineering to pay approximately 2 lakh to attend a prestigious college in Mumbai (he studied at IIT Bombay from 2010 to 2014), when he reported that the current charges at the top schools in Mumbai in the Upper Kindergarten (UKG) were over 500 times that amount.

The idea of the post was getting viral and received thousands of views and reactions. There was widespread outrage and discontent among users at the rate of inflation of education, which increased 10-12% every year compared to the general inflation. Examples of comments include: Preschool is not supposed to be more expensive than engineering, and the commentary is interspersed with jokes such as, "At this price, the child should go home with a pitch deck."

Bhatnagar dubbed it as the quiet inflation nobody is discussing and indicated that the financial load on many middle-income families that wanted a decent education for young children was increasing. High charges are often explained by good facilities, international curricula, and extracurriculars at the private schools in metros such as Mumbai, since the critics believe that they are simply pricing many of the aspiring parents out.

Accessibility to education represents a larger issue that the incident presents. Whereas government institutions such as the IITs are relatively economical (through scholarships and subsidies), the fees in the private pre-schools and secondary schools have increased manyfold. Bhatnagar even speculated that AI tutors would someday enable education to be cheaper.

The social media scrum again brought up the same issue: the price of school fees needs to be regulated, and the education pricing needs to be more transparent. With such prices flooding families, the post is like a wake-up call: how expensive kindergarten has become!