The Azim Premji Foundation has unveiled a historic undertaking of ₹2,250 crore over three years to enable more girls from government schools to undertake and complete college education. The philanthropic effort led by one of India’s most philanthropic billionaires, Azim Premji, is the largest direct benefit transfer effort by a not-for-profit private entity dedicated solely to higher education for girls.
As part of this mass initiative, the Azim Premji Foundation will award an annual scholarship of ₹30,000 to a maximum of 2.5 lakh girls who have cleared Class X and XII from government schools and are pursuing recognised colleges. Across a typical three-year undergraduate course, each of the beneficiaries will get ₹90,000 credited to her account, from September this year.
The CEO of the Foundation, Anurag Behar, said, “The primary intention of this is to enable girl children to pursue their higher studies. If a girl has studied 10th and 12th from a government school and is enrolled in a bona fide college, she can get ₹30,000 annually for the course duration.”
Azim Premji Foundation’s initiative raises an important question: Can large-scale direct financial assistance to girls close the gender divide in higher education across India?
This financial outlay will amount to ₹750 crore a year, targeting almost 2.5 lakh girl students every year. The Azim Premji Foundation hopes this gigantic intervention would benefit from the massive drop in enrolment that takes place at the secondary and tertiary levels of India’s public schooling system.
As per Economic Survey 2024-25, though India has almost 25 crore students and 15 lakh schools, enrolment comes crashing down post-primary school. Though the gross enrolment rate in primary school is a remarkable 93%, it reduces to 77.4% as one reaches Class VI. Fewer than 56.2% of the students reach Class XII, and fewer than a third of the students who achieve this go on to pursue higher education. Among those who do, girls represent a significantly lower percentage than boys—largely a function of economic restrictions in poor households.
Anurag Behar highlighted the wider social import of the scholarship: “India has achieved tremendous advancement at the primary school level, with boys and girls joining at equal rates. But when it comes to college, particularly among poorer groups, girls are usually the first to be withdrawn. Our hope is that this scholarship enables them to break this cycle and control their lives.”
The Azim Premji Foundation has a rich tradition of educational and philanthropic interventions. Established in 2001 with an initial endowment of \$125 million in Wipro equity, the foundation has gradually increased its footprint. In the last two decades, it has trained thousands of teachers in 60 districts of six states in India to enhance the quality of government school education. It also founded the Azim Premji University and a strong grant-making division to facilitate NGOs in education and related fields.
Apart from education, the Azim Premji Foundation also entered public health, establishing primary healthcare clinics in rural and underserved areas. It was instrumental in relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and other national disasters.
Azim Premji has been credited with revolutionizing corporate philanthropy in India and has given away 92% of his fortune—about \$21 billion—over the decades, mostly through the Azim Premji Foundation. He gifted 67% of his Wipro shares to the Foundation and also set up Premji Invest, his family office, whose assets fund several social causes.
Though the Azim Premji Foundation does not make the size of its endowment official, it is widely reported that the foundation has under management assets valued at \$38 billion as of 2023, placing it as the fifth-largest private endowment globally. Its size now competes with global philanthropic behemoths like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and a fellow philanthropist, once described Premji as a “giant figure” in Indian philanthropy—an acknowledgment of both the scale and the sincerity of Premji’s giving.
With this new scholarship initiative, the Azim Premji Foundation has significantly expanded its commitment to empowering disadvantaged communities—this time, by directly enabling lakhs of young girls to dream beyond school and pursue college education without the burden of financial hardship.
As this ₹2,250 crore program takes effect, the trust hopes to see not only a numerical shift in the number of girls enrolling in colleges, but also a fundamental change in the way that communities perceive the place of girls in society and their entitlement to education.
For the time being, the Azim Premji Foundation continues to pursue its age-old mission—equity in education. Through this program, it aims to make a difference towards a world where every girl, irrespective of her background, is able to complete her education and make her own way.
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