Bajaj Auto Foundation Commits Rs 400 Crore to Empower Women Engineers
The award, which the automaker called India’s largest scholarship program for women in core engineering, seeks to empower more women to explore technical careers.
Pune: Pune-based two-wheeler major Bajaj Auto’s CSR arm Bajaj Auto Foundation, on Thursday said it is committing Rs 400 crore over the next decade to empower women engineers through its newly established Rupa Rahul Bajaj Scholarship award.
The award, which the automaker called India’s largest scholarship program for women in core engineering, seeks to empower more women to explore technical careers.
The company also unveiled the scholarship identity and felicitated the inaugural cohort of 506 meritorious young scholars from 40 reputed engineering institutions, considered to be the country’s largest scholarship programme for women in core engineering.
The scholarship is awarded for meritorious young women pursuing core engineering disciplines, including mechanical, electronics, industrial instrumentation, mechatronics, robotics engineering and allied fields.
The Rupa Rahul Bajaj Scholarship award will support scholars up to Rs 8 lakh across the course of their engineering education at 40 leading engineering institutions, including IITs, NITs, IIITs, and reputed state and private universities, the foundation said.
“Women possess inherent skills of patience, empathy and diligence, which are very strong attributes to excel in core engineering jobs,” said Rajiv Bajaj, MD at Bajaj Auto.
“We identified this long back and made women engineers a significant part of our workforce. In fact, from virtually no women in our operations till around a decade back, today they account for nearly 20 per cent of our workforce,” he added.
The scholarship programme seeks to address the persistent underrepresentation of women in core engineering and manufacturing sectors at a time when advanced manufacturing, deep technology, and industrial innovation are becoming increasingly critical to India’s economic growth and global competitiveness, the foundation said.
“The Rupa Rahul Bajaj Scholarship is an investment in talent, ambition, and the belief that opportunity can unlock extraordinary potential,” Bajaj noted, adding that the company was deeply committed to ensuring that women play a far greater role in shaping the future of engineering and manufacturing.
“The future of science, engineering, and manufacturing must be built on inclusion and equal opportunity,” Bajaj said.
He said encouraging more women to pursue core engineering disciplines is not just a social imperative, but an economic one.