'Strict execution of corporate social responsibility norms will boost funds'

With the government becoming stricter with the implementation of norms related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), education start-ups can now raise more funds and help disburse the same for students’ welfare activities, said Ankur Dhawan, chief operating officer (COO), Buddy4Study, an online scholarship platform.

“Although the government continues to be a major sponsor for welfare activities, CSR money has made an important contribution to it. With over Rs 15,000 crore of CSR funds available with corporates in India, they are directly impacting the ecosystem with a focus on areas such as education, sanitation, and skilling,” Dhawan pointed out.

However, helping students from rural areas is a bit difficult due to the communication gap arising from the use of various regional languages across India. Further, the lack of internet access and technology awareness still remains a hurdle for students in rural India. “They are not aware of start-ups like ours that provide them scholarships to continue their studies. We have thousands of volunteers who are direct beneficiaries of scholarships and are working in rural areas to generate awareness so that the drop-out ratio can be minimized,” he said.

About two million students had registered themselves with Buddy4Study, which endeavours to bridge the gap between scholarship providers and seekers. It has helped about 27,000 students so far to get scholarships in 2018-19, with a majority of them being girls, noted Dhawan.

“About Rs 29 crore of scholarships have been disbursed till July 2019. We raised funds primarily through CSR contributions from big firms. We now expect to disburse about Rs 40 crore of scholarships for FY 2019-20,” he said.