Azim Premji Foundation extends girls’ scholarship to 18 states

Azim Premji Foundation (APF) has extended the scholarship for girls, launched on a pilot basis during the academic year 2024-25 in four states, now to 18 states, including Karnataka, for the academic year 2025-26.

The girls, who have completed classes 10 and 12 from a government-run school or college and have admission in a bona fide higher education institution, a degree or a diploma course, will be eligible to receive the scholarship.

The Foundation has estimated to cover up to 2.5 lakh girls this year and the annual scholarship amount is Rs 30,000 amounting to Rs 750 crore per year and comes around to Rs 2,250 crore for the next three years, the Foundation stated.  

As the scholarship is online-based, the Foundation will open the portal in August or September. Announcing the extension of scholarship, the Foundation’s CEO, Anurag Behar, said, “This is not a merit-based scholarship. This is to encourage girl students from economically weaker sections to continue higher education. In case a beneficiary drops out of the course, then the scholarship will be discontinued.”

The pilot project was started in Madhya Pradesh and certain districts of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand. Now, the scholarship will be extended to Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura, UP and Uttarakhand. During the pilot, the Foundation received 1.10 lakh applications and 25,000 were found eligible. A commitment of Rs 75 crore this year have been made for those girls. The students have been in college only for a few months now, added Anurag.

Anurag claims this as the first of its philanthropic scholarships across the world which reached beneficiaries through DBT.