The fire began in the ground floor of the building in Coimbatore from firecrackers.
One person was killed in a fire involving crackers at the KPR Civil Services Coaching Centre in Coimbatore on Friday.
According to the city police, gift boxes of firecrackers were kept in the ground floor for the workers of a mill run by owners of the institute.
An electrical short circuit is suspected to have triggered the fire.
While around 200 students in the third floor of the building manage to escape, four of them were trapped.
Fire and rescue personnel rescued three of them. 25-year-old Sakthivel died of suffocation as fumes filled the building.
S Lakshmi, Deputy Commisioner of Police said, "We are conducting an investigation. As they were gift boxes, they required no licence to store these crackers."
On Thursday, eight people were killed in a fire at a shop in Sivakasi, the firecracker capital of the country. Most of the victims were patients waiting at the adjoining diagnostic centre.