Admissions season creates a predictable opening for fraud.
Families are under real pressure at this point. Results are in. The urgency the calendar creates is genuine. Fraudsters work inside that urgency.
If someone has approached your family asking for payment to secure an engineering seat, this guide is for you. It covers what the pattern looks like, what Kalvium specifically charges, how to verify before paying, and what to do if you’ve already been contacted.
What the fraud pattern looks like
The pattern is straightforward.
Kalvium has documented it in a public notice to families: unauthorised individuals are reaching out to parents and students, demanding money in exchange for admission to Kalvium’s programmes.
The contact arrives through informal channels. WhatsApp is common. So is a phone call from someone claiming to represent the programme or an admissions partner. They say a seat is available but needs to be secured quickly. Then they ask for money.
The payment method is always informal. Cash. A UPI transfer to a personal handle. A bank transfer to an account the family can’t independently verify. None of these are how legitimate admissions fees work.
Sometimes the first request is small: a processing fee or a token amount to hold the seat. The larger ask follows once the family is already engaged.
The timing isn’t accidental. The period after results and before counselling rounds close is when anxiety is highest. That’s when the contact is made.
Three signals tend to appear together:
- The channel is informal. Legitimate institutions communicate through official channels. A WhatsApp message from someone claiming to be “from Kalvium admissions” is not an official communication.
- The urgency is manufactured. “The seat will go” is a pressure tactic, not information. Legitimate admissions processes have published timelines.
- The payment method is unverified. Cash, personal UPI, or unverifiable bank transfers are not how legitimate fees are collected.
Any one of these signals warrants pausing. All three together mean stop and verify before doing anything.
Three checks before any payment
These apply to any engineering programme, not only Kalvium.
Check one: the payment method. Kalvium does not accept cash, direct UPI payments to personal handles, bank transfers to unverified accounts, or any in-person payment at any stage. All Kalvium transactions happen online through official portals. If a request arrives through an informal channel and asks for an informal payment method, it isn’t a legitimate Kalvium request. The same principle holds for other institutions: if the payment method bypasses the official website, treat that as a signal and verify before acting.
Check two: the payment page domain. Before entering any card or account details on a payment page, check the URL in the address bar. For any Kalvium transaction, the page must be on the kalvium.com domain or a subdomain of it. If the URL is anything else, don’t proceed.
For any institution, the payment page domain should exactly match the official website. A near-identical or slightly varied domain is a warning sign.
Check three: who collects what. At Kalvium, tuition, hostel fees, and mess fees are paid directly to whichever partner university your child enrols at. Kalvium doesn’t collect tuition. The partner universities for Admission Year 2026-27 set and collect their own fees. Kalvium’s only collection is the ₹1,200 KNET registration fee.
Any payment request that claims to be from Kalvium and asks for tuition, or for any amount beyond ₹1,200, doesn’t match the documented fee structure. The Kalvium fees explained post covers the full structure, including the campus-by-campus tuition table.
What Kalvium actually charges
This is worth being specific about.
Kalvium collects ₹1,200 when a student registers for KNET. That’s the only amount Kalvium collects before enrolment. The ₹1,200 covers the selection process for all nine partner universities for Admission Year 2026-27: a Psychometric Assessment, the KNET, and an In-Person Interview. One registration is valid across all nine campuses.
If a student is selected and enrols, tuition is paid directly to the partner university. Annual tuition ranges from around ₹2,25,000 at AMET University in Chennai to ₹4,60,000 at SRM University AP. Those payments go to the university, not to Kalvium.
No amount beyond ₹1,200 is owed to Kalvium at any point. Any request that says it’s from Kalvium and asks for more than ₹1,200 is not legitimate.
For the complete campus-by-campus tuition breakdown, the Kalvium fees explained post has the full table with the payment timeline for each stage.
How to verify before paying
The practical steps are simple.
Does the payment go through an official website or portal? If yes, check the domain before entering any details. For Kalvium payments, the domain must be kalvium.com or a kalvium.com subdomain. If no, stop until you can verify through an official channel.
Has the institution confirmed this specific request through their official contact? Call the number listed on the institution’s official website, not the number the requester gave you. Ask about the specific payment you’ve been approached about. If the admissions team confirms it, proceed. If they haven’t heard of the request, you have your answer.
Does the payment structure match what’s publicly documented? For Kalvium, what’s published is this: ₹1,200 to Kalvium for KNET registration, then university tuition paid directly to the university. Any request that doesn’t match this structure isn’t legitimate for Kalvium.
These three checks take a few minutes. They’re worth doing before committing any money at any stage of the admissions process.
The parent’s guide to reservation fees covers the broader verification process: five questions worth asking any programme before you commit, not only Kalvium.
What to do if you’ve been approached
You don’t need to have paid anything for this to be worth reporting.
If someone has contacted your family requesting payment to secure a Kalvium admission, report it to srikanth@kalvium.com. Include who approached you, what they said, how much they asked for, and which channel they used. Attach any original messages, account numbers, or UPI handles.
If a payment has already been made, also file a complaint with your local cybercrime cell. Keep every piece of evidence intact: messages, account numbers, UPI handles. Don’t delete anything before filing.
If you’re uncertain whether a request is legitimate, contact the Kalvium admissions team through the official contact on kalvium.com before taking any further action.
What this post covers and what it doesn’t
The scope here is specific.
This post describes the fraud pattern Kalvium has documented and the verification steps that apply before any payment. It doesn’t cover the full range of admissions fraud across India, it doesn’t name third parties by name, and it makes no claims about how frequently fraud occurs or its broader financial scale.
For the complete picture of how Kalvium’s admissions process works, the complete guide for families covers the programme structure, the nine partner universities, and the selection process from registration to enrolment.
If something about a payment request feels wrong, it’s worth five minutes to verify before acting on it.