The Rupa Rahul Bajaj Scholarship for Women in Engineering, launched on Thursday, is being positioned by the company as India’s largest scholarship programme for women in core engineering. It will provide financial support of up to ₹8 lakh to students enrolled in disciplines such as mechanical engineering, electronics, mechatronics, robotics and industrial instrumentation at 40 institutions, including IITs, NITs and IIITs.
The Foundation felicitated the first cohort of 506 scholars at an event attended by Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson of Biocon.
The initiative comes as the industry seeks to increase women’s participation in engineering and manufacturing, particularly in core technical roles where representation remains limited. Ravi Kyran, Chief Human Resource Officer at Bajaj Auto, said only about a quarter of women engineering students opt for mechanical engineering, while just 13 per cent eventually pursue careers in core engineering. The scholarship, he said, is aimed at addressing that gap.
Addressing the gathering, Bajaj said women now account for nearly 20% of Bajaj Auto’s workforce, compared with virtually none a decade ago. He said the company had benefited from greater participation by women engineers and argued that India’s long-term industrial competitiveness would depend on strengthening technical education and skills development.
Bajaj also outlined what he described as three guiding principles — individuality, holism and vitality — stressing the need to recognise unique talent, take a broad view of challenges and build capabilities from within through education, research and innovation.
Mazumdar-Shaw urged students to embrace risk and learn from setbacks, saying innovation and entrepreneurship are built through experimentation and persistence.”The future of science, engineering and manufacturing must be built on inclusion and equal opportunity,” she said. “Encouraging more women to pursue core engineering disciplines is not just a social imperative, but an economic one.”
Drawing on her own entrepreneurial journey, Mazumdar-Shaw told students that taking ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace requires patience and resilience. Research, she said, is only the starting point; turning innovation into products and businesses often involves repeated failures, learning and adaptation.
Bajaj Auto Foundation said it has invested nearly ₹550 crore in skilling and community initiatives over the past five years and plans to scale that commitment to around ₹1,500 crore over the next five years.