Viveka Scholar Program
Enabling meritorious young people to continue their education, widen their horizons and grow from scholarship recipients into confident professionals, mentors, volunteers and nation-builders.
Our Objective
To expand equitable access to pre-university, higher and professional education through need-based financial assistance, academic support, mentoring, life skills and exposure — while nurturing capable, socially conscious young people who contribute to their communities and the nation.
More than a scholarship
Started in 2006, Viveka Scholar Program supports academically meritorious students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to continue pre-university and higher education. Over time, the programme has grown from financial and academic support into a longer journey of mentoring, exposure, career development and service.
Read more about the Viveka Scholar Program
VSP responds to a simple but persistent gap: talent is widely distributed, while opportunity is not. Financial constraints, limited career exposure, language transitions, family circumstances and unfamiliarity with professional pathways can prevent capable young people from continuing education even after strong academic performance.
Identify potential. Remove barriers. Stay with the student. Expand opportunity. Encourage every scholar to use that opportunity responsibly — for family, community and society.
VSP builds capability within young people while strengthening relationships of trust, mentorship, peer support and service around them — linking individual advancement with a wider social purpose.
Expanding access — and staying with the journey
VSP combines scholarship support with continued academic and career accompaniment, with a strong emphasis on expanding opportunity for girls and first-generation learners.
Higher-education scholarships — recent progression
From selection to scholarship — and from scholarship to possibility
VSP uses a merit-cum-means process and combines financial support with counselling, mentoring, life skills, exposure and career guidance. The intention is not simply to fund a course, but to help young people navigate higher education and professional life.
Applications assessed
Higher-education scholarship applications considered in 2025–26.
Face-to-face interviews
Students and families engaged through the selection process.
Engineering & allied
Higher-education scholars by field: 60% engineering & allied, 25% medical & allied, 11% pure sciences and 4% agriculture & allied.
Beyond tuition fees
Academic progress is strengthened when students also gain confidence, networks, exposure and the ability to imagine themselves in unfamiliar professional and public spaces.
In 2025–26, scholars participated in internships across education, health care, technology and programme management. Others received sector-specific workshops, practical exposure and career guidance.
VSP alumni Basheera Bangi and Dhanya L also witnessed the presentation of the Union Budget in Parliament — an exposure connecting education with governance, public policy and citizenship.
Career outcomes
44 scholars from previous batches secured employment, with reported annual salary packages ranging from ₹2.59 lakh to ₹17.5 lakh.
The purpose is not only placement. It is the confidence to make informed choices, support one's family and participate meaningfully in society.
A journey shared across generations of scholars
Yuva Payana is VSP's annual gathering — bringing scholars, alumni, parents, teachers, supporters and the SVYM community together.
Scholarship distribution is only one part of the gathering. Career counselling, speaker interactions, cultural activities and conversations with alumni help younger scholars see the many directions their own journeys can take.
Most importantly, Yuva Payana keeps relationships alive across batches. Alumni return not simply as success stories, but as people who can guide, encourage and open doors for those following them.
For VSP, the most meaningful sign of success is when a scholar who once needed support begins to support someone else — through time, knowledge, mentorship, volunteering or financial contribution.
A scholarship can support a student. A movement invites the student to support society.
Scholars are not treated only as beneficiaries. As they grow, SVYM becomes a platform through which they can mentor, teach, volunteer, solve problems and discover the meaning of Seva through action.
Teaching & mentoring
Alumni and scholars return to guide younger students, support peer learning and contribute to teaching at VPUC and other learning spaces.
Anveshane
VSP alumni volunteer as teachers, mentors and examination contributors, helping identify the next generation of talented students.
Health & community service
Recent internships included audiometric evaluation and palliative-care support — contributing time while learning from SVYM's field programmes.
Skills for the organisation
Scholars have contributed through technology and programme management, including a data-management application for VSP.
When support becomes a ripple
An earlier VSP alumna, Harshitha, returned to Yuva Payana as a role model after beginning her nursing career. She donated her entire first salary to VSP so another student could receive an opportunity similar to the one she had received.
Across VSP's history, alumni have sponsored students, taught, mentored, guided careers and even started organisations of their own to serve others. The return is not expected as repayment. It is encouraged as responsibility, gratitude and service.
One programme. Many journeys of possibility.
Behind every scholarship is a family, a set of barriers, and a young person trying to hold on to an aspiration. These stories show what becomes possible when timely support is combined with mentoring, persistence and a community that stays with the student.
Browse the stories and open the ones you would like to read. The carousel keeps the page compact while allowing each journey the space it deserves.
Stories adapted from publicly documented SVYM Annual Reports and published reflections by SVYM education leadership. Details are intentionally kept concise here; open a story to read the fuller journey.
Harshitha — when opportunity becomes Tyaga
Harshitha's educational journey carried the challenges familiar to many VSP scholars: a Kannada-medium government-school background, a difficult transition into science, and the pressure of building a career that could help lift her family economically.
VSP stayed connected with her from pre-university through B.Sc Nursing. When she returned to Yuva Payana after securing her first job as a nurse, she stood before younger scholars as an alumna who had crossed a threshold many of them were still approaching.
Then she made a deeply personal choice: she donated her entire first salary to VSP, believing it could help another young person receive the opportunity she had once received. Her story is not presented as an expectation placed on scholars. It is a reminder of what can happen when support becomes gratitude, and gratitude becomes service.
Yogeesh — staying with the dream when money runs out
Yogeesh came from a financially struggling family in H.D. Kote taluk and moved from Kannada-medium schooling into English-medium pre-university education. During PU he also lost months of attendance to a prolonged bout of typhoid, while his family struggled with treatment expenses.
He still completed PU with 92.7%. Afterward, he worked alongside his father as an agricultural labourer to save for college. Even with scholarship support, his engineering admission required the family to borrow from moneylenders. He had qualified JEE Main but did not sit for JEE Advanced because he could not afford the fee and felt uncomfortable asking others for more help.
He eventually joined Computer Science Engineering at NIE, Mysuru, and secured a software placement before completing his degree. His admission experience also helped SVYM recognise that students sometimes need short-term financial support at the precise moment of college admission — contributing to the creation of the VSP Revolving Fund.
Nithyashree — from first engineer to mentor
Nithyashree encountered VSP at an important point in 2010–11, when she was determined to become an engineer — the first in her family. The programme helped her continue towards that goal and access higher education.
Years later, as a professional with Samsung Research & Development, her relationship with VSP did not end with employment. She returned to mentor younger scholars and contributed a substantial part of her salary towards the education of other VSP students.
Her journey embodies the idea that VSP is not simply a transfer of financial support from donor to student. It can become a widening circle in which a scholar gains capability, becomes professionally secure, and then chooses to create opportunity for someone else.
Maniya — the right support at the right time
Maniya grew up in Vadakanamala near D.B. Kuppe. His parents owned a small agricultural plot and also worked as daily-wage labourers. When he moved from Kannada-medium schooling into English-medium pre-university education, science suddenly felt overwhelming, and he considered changing streams.
Mentoring through VSP helped him remain with science. He went on through undergraduate and postgraduate study and later joined the PhD programme at IIT Guwahati in synthetic organic chemistry.
In a 2026 reflection after meeting Maniya again, Praveen Kumar Sayyaparaju noted another quiet dimension of the family's journey: construction of their home had repeatedly been postponed while the children's education remained the priority. The story is powerful precisely because there is no single dramatic turning point — just persistence, family sacrifice, mentoring and timely support over many years.
Deepika — making mathematics a possible future
Deepika comes from Chhakodanahalli, a small village in H.D. Kote taluk. She became the first person in her family to attend college and left her village for higher education, initially joining VPUC and living in a hostel for the first time.
The transition was not easy, but the residential learning environment, friendships and accessible teachers gradually helped her settle in. She later began pursuing a B.Sc in Mathematics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.
What is especially revealing is how aspiration travels through a community of scholars. Deepika looked to older VSP alumni who had reached institutions such as the IITs and began imagining an M.Sc at an IIT for herself. Role models made a distant pathway feel tangible.
The Dindur sisters — education changing the possibilities of a family
The Dindur family in Hebballi, Dharwad, faced severe disruption after the death of the father. Their mother supported the family by working from home as a seamstress, while her daughters tried to continue their education despite financial and social pressures.
Renuka, a VSP scholar, completed PUC Science and a B.Sc and secured employment with the Indian Postal Department. Pavitra completed B.A.M.S, became a doctor and also began seeing patients from a small clinic at home. Akshata completed an M.Sc in Chemistry and became a teaching assistant, with plans for doctoral study.
The strength of this story lies not in portraying adversity as romantic. It shows how sustained educational access can change the range of choices available within a family — and how individual donors, institutions and programmes can help remove barriers without diminishing the agency and hard work of the students themselves.
Young people who see themselves as contributors
VSP's ambition extends beyond degrees and employment. It is to help young people become informed, capable and socially conscious citizens who can strengthen families, professions, communities and public institutions.
Many VSP and VPUC alumni are pursuing medicine, engineering, veterinary science, agriculture and other professional pathways. At the same time, alumni are already returning as volunteer teachers and supporting Anveshane examinations.
Opportunity → achievement → responsibility → service → new opportunity for someone else.
Building human + social capital
Human capital: education, knowledge, professional skills, confidence, employability and leadership.
Social capital: mentorship, trust, peer networks, volunteering, service and willingness to invest in another person's future.
Help one journey open the way for another
Support to VSP helps academically meritorious students continue pre-university and higher education while accessing mentoring, exposure and guidance that can turn a scholarship into a longer pathway of possibility.
Support a scholar. Strengthen a generation.
When a young person receives the opportunity to learn, grow and serve, the impact can travel far beyond one scholarship — into families, communities and the next generation of learners.