STEM at Your Doorstep: The Scholarship Drive

Komal’s parents run a small ironing stall in Dehradun. Neither of them learned to read the mathematics their daughter was falling in love with. She enrolled in B.Sc. Mathematics at DAV PG College because it was close, and because it was what the family’s finances allowed. IIT was not a word anyone used at home. She had never let herself imagine it.

Then a mentor from VigyanShaala started asking her a different question. Not what can you afford, but what are you capable of. He pointed her toward an internship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, then toward the IIT JAM exam. She cleared it. She left for Mumbai, against every instinct a childhood of scarcity had trained into her family. She earned her master’s in mathematics from IIT Bombay. Today she works as a BI Developer at Axis Mutual Fund.

Nothing about Komal’s story was inevitable. The talent was always there. What was missing was money, at a specific point, for a specific thing: an exam fee, a train ticket, a year’s tuition. Partners who believed in students like her made that possible. That same belief now lets us reach thousands of students a year.

She is not alone. Garima started in Berinag, a small Himalayan town, and went on to postgraduate studies in biotechnology. She now researches cataract treatment. Tarun grew up in a village in Pithoragarh where nobody had heard of IIT JAM. In 2026 he placed All India Rank 3 in CUET PG Chemistry. Muralika grew up in a fishing village on the Kerala coast, her father a fish vendor. She is now studying applied mathematics at the Technion in Israel. Different states, different subjects, the same pattern. Ability that was always there, waiting on something else to arrive.

STEM at your doorstep is what VigyanShaala builds: mentoring, hands-on learning, and a path from a village school to a research lab, wherever a student starts. This festive season, whatever you celebrate, we are asking for the one part we cannot build ourselves: the money that turns a year of possibility into a year that actually happens.

Every rupee raised goes into a scholarship pool, not into running our programs. It funds students directly, at whichever stage they need it:

A monthly stipend, ₹1,000, for a student in a last-mile Himalayan village or a rural pocket in Telangana.

Exam preparation, ₹8,000, for a student attempting IIT JAM or CUET PG.

A year’s internship stipend, ₹24,000, for a Rural STEM Champions fellow from a last-mile Himalayan college.

A year on a STEM project with a global mentor, ₹45,000.

A full masters degree in India, ₹2,00,000, tuition and accommodation included, the tier that matches a year like Komal’s.

We hope to raise ₹25 lakh for student scholarships.

We are not asking you to save anyone. Komal saved herself. Garima, Tarun, and Muralika did too. We are asking whether you want to be part of the year they couldn’t have paid for on their own.