With more than 700 universities, 35,000 colleges and hundreds of private technical and professional institutions, India’s higher education landscape is thriving. Despite this, our country’s Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education is a mere 19%, far below that of economies such as the US (34%), UK (59%), Japan (55%) and China (28%).

This means, for every 100 Indians in the age group of 18 to 24, only 19 pursue higher education. These statistics are alarming for a country in which nearly 50 percent of the population is below 50. One of the ways to surmount this gap is by empowering youngsters from economically weaker families to pursue higher studies.