Police Chief Mentors 331 UPSC Winners Free via WhatsApp

Mahesh Bhagwat wakes up early every morning to answer messages from strangers preparing for India's most competitive government job exam. The Director General of Police in Telangana has been doing this for over a decade, and the results are staggering.

In 2025, 331 of the 958 candidates who passed the UPSC Civil Services examination had received free mentorship from Bhagwat's network. That's more than one in three successful candidates, all guided through WhatsApp groups and phone calls by a team of 30 volunteer mentors.

The numbers tell an even more remarkable story in specialized services. In the Indian Forest Service exam, 84 of 148 selected candidates came through his program. For three straight years, the top scorer in the entire country was someone Bhagwat had mentored.

His journey began in a small village in Maharashtra where he grew up speaking Marathi and doubting his English skills. "I had an inferiority complex about English. My background was rural," he recalls.

Everything changed when he learned that candidates could take the UPSC exam in their native language. A college senior who wrote the test in Marathi and passed showed him what was possible.

After earning his engineering degree, Bhagwat took a high-paying corporate job not to abandon his dream but to fund it. He studied on bus rides and even on water trucks while doing rural development work.

In 1994, he took a calculated risk and quit before his exam results arrived. He passed and joined the Indian Police Service in 1995.

Why This Inspires

Bhagwat never forgot what it felt like to prepare largely alone. When an aspiring officer named Nitish Pathode created a WhatsApp group in 2015 for Maharashtra candidates, Bhagwat jumped in as a mentor.

The group solved a real problem. Hundreds of candidates stayed in government housing in Delhi but had no one to answer basic questions about the final interview stage.

Bhagwat saw the potential and created his own group for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh candidates. It grew into a nationwide network focused on the personality test, the final 275 marks that often determine whether candidates get their preferred government service.

The mentorship costs nothing and asks nothing in return. About 80 percent of successful Maharashtra candidates now pass through these groups.

Today, roughly 300 Maharashtra candidates reach the interview stage each year, with around 100 getting selected. Most of them connected with mentors who remember what it was like to navigate the process without guidance.

A village boy who once doubted himself now helps thousands believe they can succeed too.