Amid the COVID-19 crisis impacting the education of millions of students across India, Buddy4Study, India’s largest scholarship platform has helped more than 5000 students with scholarships worth INR 12.5 Cr in March 2020. The key scholarships disbursed are under STFC Shriram Meritorious Scholarship Programme, Shriram Capital Scholarship and LIC- HFL Vidhyadhan Scholarship programme.

Commenting on the initiative, Manjeet Singh, CEO, Buddy4Study said, “The record number of scholarships disbursed this month is a milestone for all of us at Buddy4Study. We are thankful to our corporate partners who have supported us in this moment of COVID 19 crisis and helped us provide financial aid to these many students. We look forward to accelerating further and being more aggressive towards our mission of enabling every student to fulfill their educational dreams.”

As per the scholarship disbursal data of March, more than 70 percent beneficiary students belonged to the annual family income group of less than INR 1 lakh. Further, close to 90 percent of scholars had an annual family income of less than INR 2 lakh.

Ankur Dhawan, COO, Buddy4Study said that the large-scale scholarship fund disbursal amid the COVID-19 crisis will enable the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) scholars to pursue alternate learning methods as well. “Our focus has always been to help the EWS students who find it difficult to continue their education. The emerging COVID-19 has further brought the education support system for them to a halt. This may result in an increased possibility of such EWS students dropping out from the formal education system,” he said.

“With the help of our scholarship funds, such students can buy smartphones and get internet connections installed at their home to avail online learning and turn this moment of crisis into an opportune time for learning,” he added.

Buddy4Study supports over 1.8 million students per month by connecting them with suitable scholarships via end-to-end application support. The company has a cutting-edge AI-driven scholarship search engine to ensure that the results are as accurate as possible. Moreover, it is the only platform in India which gives students access to curated scholarship information from across the globe.

Kumkum Kumari, a class 11 student who received INR 10,000 STFC scholarship, thanked STFC and Buddy4Study for helping her with the scholarship amount. “This scholarship has come as a big support to me. My father is a taxi driver and he is stuck at home due to the ongoing movement restrictions. My school is shut. But I will now use this scholarship amount to buy a smartphone and start availing online learning material.”

To help EWS students with online learning mode, Buddy4Study is also launching its counselling programme to handhold students towards e-learning.