Screwvala gives education scholarship fund for online courses

Mumbai: Online education start-up co-founder Ronnie Screwvala has launched a Rs 100 crore education scholarship fund to provide loans to those looking at doing online courses to improve their skill sets.

The fund will give scholarships ranging from Rs 25,000 and up to Rs 2 lakh. "We need 125 million young Indians in post-graduation studies and currently not more than 30 million today are engaged in higher studies as a majority of them start working early in their career and so online learning or education is the real answer," Screwvala said in a statement here today.

He said the scholarship fund is aimed at skilling motivated individuals in relevant areas and equip them with industry-relevant knowledge. The fund is been launched with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore and Screwvala aims to increase the size to Rs 400 crore over the next 3-4 years.

He himself has invested Rs 10 crore in the fund and will raise the rest from individuals and corporates committed to build an ecosystem for tomorrow. The fund will also invest and partner with UpGrad, the online education platform co-founded by Screwvala.