About the Academy

We are not preparing you for an exam.
We are preparing you for a ship.

An entrance test is a gate, not a destination. Behind it is a career where a mistake at 0300 hours is not marked in red ink. Everything we teach — and the way we teach it — is built backwards from that reality.

Why We Exist

Built by officers, for the exam they wish they'd been taught for.

Merchant Navy aspirants lose years to the wrong preparation. Coached by people who have never seen a bridge, from material that stopped tracking the exam pattern, they arrive at IMU-CET having drilled Physics to JEE depth and never once practised the English, Aptitude and General Knowledge sections that make up a third of the paper.

Reef Marine Academy exists to close that gap. Every session is taught by someone who has done the job our students are preparing for. Our 1-Year Batch is deliberately long, because the honest answer to "how long does this take?" is twelve months, not twelve weeks — and deliberately capped at forty students, because a mentor who cannot name your weak chapter is not mentoring you.

The first question we ask any student is the uncomfortable one: do you actually want this life, or do you want the photographs of it? Everything we do afterwards depends on an honest answer to that.

What Drives Us

Mission & Vision

Our Mission

To take a disciplined, ambitious student and give them everything required to walk onto a ship as a competent officer-in-training: the academics to clear IMU-CET, the composure to clear a sponsorship panel, and the character to be trusted with a watch.

Our Vision

To be the institute whose name a Master or Chief Engineer recognises on a cadet's file — and expects good work because of it. We measure ourselves not by admission numbers but by how our students are spoken about ten years after they leave us.

Discipline

Timings are timings. Uniform is uniform. A student who cannot keep a study schedule ashore will not keep a watch schedule at sea.

Mentorship

Every student is assigned a faculty mentor who tracks their marks, their mock scores and their confidence — and calls home when any of the three slips.

Honesty

We would rather lose an admission than take money from a student whose age, eyesight or marks rule them out. You will hear that on the first call, not in the tenth month.

The Founders

People who have held the certificate you are chasing.

Reef Marine Academy is run by Merchant Navy officers — two Master Mariners and two Chief Officers — who teach the exam and the interview they have sat on both sides of. Two of them co-founded the ship management companies 6 Degrees and One North, so the people preparing you for a hiring panel have run one.

Capt. Mukul Bajaj

Co-Founder · Senior Maritime Advisor

Master Mariner (FG), ISO/ISM Internal Auditor, and co-founder of 6 Degrees Ship Management and One North Ship Management. He came to that after command and shore leadership at Maersk Tankers and TORM, two of the standards-setting names in tanker operations. He knows exactly what a hiring panel at a top global line is listening for — he has sat on the other side of it as the owner. At Reef Marine Academy he directs sponsorship preparation and compliance mentorship.

Capt. Amit Kumar

Co-Founder · Director of Training

Master Mariner, Marine Superintendent and co-founder of 6 Degrees Ship Management and One North Ship Management, with years in command of commercial vessels worldwide and certification as an ISM, ISPS and MLC Auditor. He owns the teaching standard here — navigation, meteorology, ship handling and the business of leading a multinational crew at three in the morning when something has gone wrong. His rule for the classroom is the one he used at sea: understand it, or do not claim you know it.

C/O Pankaj Sharma

Co-Founder · Head of Sponsorship & Interview Preparation

A serving deck officer working toward command, and the person who will sit across from you in your first mock interview. He runs sponsorship training end to end: the written pattern each company uses, the group discussion, and the panel itself — maritime aptitude, current affairs, and the composure an interviewer is actually measuring while asking about your favourite subject.

C/O Dinesh Bhalothia

Co-Founder · Head of Academics, IMU-CET

A chemical tanker specialist — the trade where a checklist missed is a career ended — and he brings exactly that temperament to the syllabus. He builds the academic framework, the study material and the exam strategy: subject-wise planning across Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, English and Aptitude, mock tests on the real pattern, and a running record of where every single student stands.

The Campus

Chirawa–Pilani Road, Chirawa.

Classrooms, hostel guidance and open ground on one site — because a year of disciplined study is easier in a place built for it than in a rented room above a market.

The Reef Marine Academy building on Chirawa-Pilani Road

Students playing volleyball on the academy grounds

How We Teach

The five-stage method

01
Diagnose

An entry test and an eligibility audit. We find the real gap before we sell you a solution.
02
Build

Concept classes in PCM, English, Aptitude and GK — sequenced against your board exams, not against them.
03
Drill

Daily practice sets from a 6000+ MCQ bank. Accuracy first, then speed. Never the other way round.
04
Simulate

Full-length CBT mocks under exam conditions, plus company-pattern sponsorship tests.
05
Present

Grooming, group discussion and mock interviews with officers who have sat on selection panels.

Come and see a class before you decide.

Bring your parents. Sit through a session. Ask the faculty anything about the career. There is no charge and no obligation.

Book a Demo Class See the Programmes