Buddy4Study, a scholarship and mentorship platform, is going to facilitate more than Rs 180 crore of scholarship funds among close to 60,000 school and college students in the financial year 2023-24, as per the press release.
The ed-tech platform, in partnership with India’s leading corporates, NGOs and corporate foundations, identifies deserving students via the pool of online applications it receives from students across India. Currently, scholarship applications are open for various programmes and the selection process is also underway on the platform with a total scholarship fund outlay of Rs 140 crore.
As per the platform, the scholarship application on the platform is completely free-of-cost for the students and the scholarship fund is directly disbursed into the bank account (via DBT) of the beneficiaries in a majority of the scholarship programmes.
In FY 2022-23, the platform claimed to disburse a total scholarship fund of Rs 110 crore among more than 38,000 students.
“India’s unique strength lies in the power of its youth who can transform our country into a developed nation provided they are empowered with access to quality education. At Buddy4Study, we envision making quality education accessible to all. In our 13th year of existence now, we are proud to have helped thousands of students in their education journey to achieve their dreams. We are now on a mission to support 10 million students with financial and mentorship support by 2030. Towards this mission, we are fortunate to have gotten support from our existing and new partners and funders to create more such opportunities to help students for schools and colleges across India,” Ashutosh Burnwal, Founder, CEO, Buddy4Study said.
Buddy4Study claimed that it has implemented scholarship and mentorship programmes of more than 150 funders including major corporates such as HDFC Bank, Loreal India, Schaeffler India, Alstom, Rolls-Royce, Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services, Kotak Education Foundation, Aditya Birla Capital Foundation to provide financial assistance to students.
The platform is currently managing scholarship programmes catering to a diverse set of students across India. These scholarship and mentorship programmes include initiatives such as Kotak Kanya Scholarship 2023, Rolls-Royce Unnati Scholarship for Women Engineering Students 2023, Virchow Scholarship Programme aimed at empowering girl students, Saksham Scholarship Programme for Drivers’ Children aimed to help drivers’ children and many other scholarships targeting specific academic streams. Another programme where special weightage is given to transgender students and differently-abled girl students is Legrand Empowering Scholarship Programme, as detailed in the press release.
“Buddy4Study’s technology-driven system ensures scholarship funds are directly credited to the beneficiary’s bank account. The transparent and efficient scholarship management process at Buddy4Study not only makes it easier for the students to apply for scholarship opportunities and avail benefits but also helps scholarship providers monitor the progress with real-time data through their live dashboard,” Neha Agarwal, chief strategy and growth officer, Buddy4Study, said.