Kota Factory is an Indian Hindi-language television series created by Saurabh Khanna, directed by Raghav Subbu and produced by Arunabh Kumar for The Viral Fever.
It shows the life of students in the city, and Vaibhav's efforts to get into an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) by cracking the Joint Entrance Examination.
Jeetu Bhaiya advises students to take a break from JEE studies and attend school practicals.
While Khanna compared the script of the series to Biswa Kalyan Rath's Laakhon Mein Ek, a similar web show released in late 2017, and a documentary An Engineered Dream, by Hemant Gaba, Khanna stated that the script is distinctively different from both the works as this show is set in India's coaching hub of Kota in Rajasthan.
[2] "The popular narrative surrounding Kota and IIT preparation in Indian pop culture is that parents torment their children by pushing them through the process and it’s a one-sided representation.
"Khanna drew the inspiration of the series as he and the creative team of TVF (Arunabh Kumar, Amit Golani, and Biswapati Sarkar) were IIT graduates.
[16] Khanna stated about his role, adding that, "Teaching is a very humble, underrated profession, where those who practice it are not that high up on the social ladder.
"[17] One of the characters Uday, is played by Alam Khan, who also appeared in Laakhon Mein Ek, having the similar storyline and role as of Kota Factory, but Khanna conveyed it as unintentional.
It features twelve original compositions with two songs "The Gentleman" sung and written by Simran Hora and "Main Bola Hey!"
This plot has been found similar to the 2009 film 3 Idiots, the web series Laakhon Mein Ek and the docu-drama An Engineer's Dream.
[3] But, Tanul Thakur of the British magazine The Wire, deploys the realistic portrayals of the series as compared to the feature films based on the same theme.
[2] In December 2018, TVF released the official teaser through its YouTube channel which received wide response from audiences.
[33] Devasheesh Pandey of News18 praised the cinematography, art direction, sound design as well as the acting performances of the show and gave it a rating of 3.5 out of 5 saying that, "Kota Factory maintains an edge over other shows in the genre, courtesy of its on-point, deadpan humour and a relatably bittersweet aftertaste of existential battle that the protagonist is facing.
"[34] Ishita Sengupta of The Indian Express found the show to be engaging and applauded it saying that, "The ingenuity of Kota Factory lies in its ability to deal with different narrative strands and coalesce them effortlessly."
Ishita also felt that the performances of the actors, specially Mayur More and Ranjan Raj, add a lot of value to the show.
[35] Rahul Desai of Film Companion was impressed with the mature depiction of the subject at hand and praised the acting performances as well as the writing of the show saying that, "Kota Factory’s biggest asset is its writing which somehow maintains a semi-dramatic progression without compromising on the factual tone of the series.
"[36] Gautam Batra of Koimoi praised the direction and the acting performances of the show and gave it a rating of 4 out of 5 saying that, "the web series has taken a very less dramatic route to narrate the story which makes it extremely relatable watch.
"[37] Priyanka Bansal of The Quint praised the show for presenting a fresh perspective on the education system in India.