Our Mission

The Foundation (SDEF) provides Merit-cum-Means Scholarships to exceptionally talented but poor students in India pursuing professional courses. The foundation awards scholarships to recent high school students who are the top rankers in national/state level common entrance tests, based on which they have secured admissions to quality institutes/colleges.

We fund the most talented students and help them pursue the best education in India. Given the level of tuition and other fees in professional colleges, the poor have no chance today to pursue their dreams of becoming engineers. These students cannot get educational loans from banks either given the insistence of banks in India for history of banking relationships and a need for collateral. However, the earning potential of these professions is very high. A prfessional earns enough to help his/her family financially, lifting the whole family out of the poverty trap. 

The student also becomes a role model in the community inspiring others to pursue this path. In other words, the multiplier effect on the society of enabling a talented child to become a high income earning professional is huge. By a conservative estimate, each rupee invested in a talented child returns 140x to the society.

Our Team

Trustees (USA)

Ashutosh Garg (Secretary)  - Profile

Mamta Garg (Board Member) 

Aparna Gupta (Board Member) 

Sidharth Garg (Board Member) - Profile

Trustees (India)

Arun Garg (Managing Trustee) - Profile

Upsala Garg (Member)

Management & Administration

Vimla Pawar

Indian Scholarships:

We started Indian Scholarships in India in 2015. We started by contacting IITs for sending students for scholarships. We expanded our reach by including all NITs. We got a tremendous response and almost 990 applications in the first year. We provided about 100 scholarships in 2015. Each scholarship is Rs. 20,000 per year ( at par with the national scholarship). We have set an income limit of Rs. 6 lacs per year for qualifying the scholarship. We also set a minimum of 70% marks. The students need to maintain or improve their GPA every year to qualify for the renewal of  scholarships.

Next year, we expanded our reach to include medical colleges. In 2017, we   opened it to any student pursuing professional courses. In 2018 onwards, we have now included the top 100 private colleges on our list to award scholarships.

Several websites in India have helped us promote our scholarship program. Many regional newspapers have printed our flyers in their newspaper without any fee.

India is a vast country, and we can't meet the applicants and their family. We have hired a company in India to go and meet the parents in their home and conduct a 15 minutes interview. They take pictures of the home and business and send us back for evaluation. The program is running very well, and we are making improvements every year as we learn from our experience.

USA Scholarship Program:

This year, we decided to start our scholarship program for High School Students from State of Texas. We are starting with twenty scholarships of $2000 per year for four years. These are for study at any college in the USA. The scholarships are open to everyone. We prefer girls, minorities, and students whose parents have not had a college education. The scholarships are means based ( typical family income of $70,000 per year or less). We prefer the students should maintain a minimum GPA of 3.0. We have been contacting all High Schools Principals and Counselors. We partnered with Momentum Education this year, and their team has helped us select five students from the Houston Area. We are also on track to select another seven students for scholarships this semester. Aparna and Sidharth are actively involved in the foundation and has been conducting interviews with students.  These students are mostly from Fort Bend Area.  We plan to select another 8 in the spring semester for a total of twenty scholarships this year. We are impressed with all the students who are selected for scholarships this year. It appears that they are a lot of deserving candidates who can benefit from scholarships.

Each scholarship recipient makes a pledge to support at least two more students once he/she has the capacity to do so. This pledge provides a built in mechanism for the future sustainability of the scholarship program. As we become better at sustaining relationships with our scholars, this amount will only go up in the future. An additional unique aspect of the foundation is that every rupee of every donation goes to the scholar directly.