Raju Kendre arrived in Pune in 2011 with little money and a dream of becoming an IAS officer. Within months, he had dropped out. A decade later, his foundation has sent more than 3,000 first-generation students from marginalised communities to some of the world’s top universities.
In 2011, Raju Kendre travelled nearly 400 kilometres from a small village in the Vidarbha region – an area known for its agrarian distress – to Pune, carrying about a few thousands that his mother had managed to save. It was all the money she had. He arrived with good academic results, admission to Pune University, and a clear plan: to become an IAS officer. What he did not have was financial support, guidance, or any understanding of how to navigate life in a city that ran on codes his upbringing had never taught him. His dialect was different. His background was invisible in that space. Within a few months, he had dropped out.
He went back to his village and continued studying through distance learning. And he started paying closer attention to what was actually happening around him.
That detour, difficult as it was, turned out to be the beginning of everything. Today, Raju is the founder and CEO of the Eklavya India Foundation, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, an Ashoka Fellow, a British Council Alumni Award recipient, and a Chevening Scholar. He has also received the Echoing Green and German Chancellor Fellowships, along with several other national and international recognitions. His foundation has helped over 3,000 students from marginalised communities gain entry into institutions including IIT, IIM, Cambridge, and Harvard, and has secured over seven million dollars (58 crore) in scholarships on their behalf.
Growing Up in Vidarbha
Raju grew up in a nomadic tribal-agricultural community in central India’s Vidarbha region. His parents were married at the ages of seven and nine, in the 1970s, and spent their lives working on farms. Neither of them had the chance to complete primary schooling. Just a decade ago, the family’s monthly income was under 20 thousand.
Despite that, both parents had one consistent belief: that education was the way out. “They believed education was the key to a better future,” Raju says. “And today, I can confidently say they were right. They proved it.”
He studied at a government school in his hamlet, then moved to a public residential school at the district level. Over Sixty students shared a hall of 100 square metres for three to four years. It was not comfortable, but it was an opportunity, and he took it seriously. At 18, he became the first person in his entire generation to aspire to a university degree.
Pune, and What It Cost Him
Raju had set his sights on the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), one of India’s most prestigious civil service roles. A university degree felt like the first step. He enrolled at Pune University and arrived in the city with little money and high hopes.
The money ran out quickly. There was no financial aid, no mentorship, no support structure of any kind. But the harder problem was something else entirely. Pune’s elite educational spaces had their own unspoken requirements: fluency in a particular kind of English, familiarity with certain social circles, confidence in environments built for people from very different backgrounds. Raju had none of that, and nobody offered to help him find it.
“I felt like an outsider in the big city. My language, culture, and dialect were not accepted in that elite system. I felt isolated, overwhelmed, and alone, just like many first-generation students who experience university for the first time in India.”
Around the same time, joined a grassroots organisation working with indigenous communities across central India. Over two years of fieldwork, he saw children travelling over 100 miles just to access a basic degree, and entire communities cut off from resources and opportunities that others took for granted.
It was during this period that his original ambition began to shift. The IAS dream had been about reaching a position from which he could help people. But the more he saw, the more distant that model felt. “Becoming a bureaucrat, working in an office far removed from the real issues, was not my true calling,” he says. “I wanted to work directly with my community.”
TISS and a Different Kind of Confidence
His fieldwork experience drove him toward a more focused kind of training. He applied to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, one of Asia’s most respected institutions for social science, and got in. It was his first time in an English-medium academic environment, and his classmates were, for the most part, from privileged urban backgrounds, fluent in English, and comfortable in elite circles.
This time, though, he did not feel undone by it. He had spent two years in the field. He knew things his classmates did not. “I knew my lived experiences and firsthand knowledge of my community were my strengths,” he says. He completed his postgraduate degree in Social Work and, unlike most of his peers, did not take a corporate placement.
He went back to Vidarbha.
Eklavya: Starting with Seven Students
In 2017, Raju joined a Savitri Jotirao social work college in Yavatmal, in the same Vidarbha region where he had grown up. That year, he also launched the Eklavya India Foundation, named after the self-taught archer from the Mahabharata. The foundation started with seven students enrolled in a year-long mentorship and training programme.
The programme now supports more than 1,000 students at a time. To date, the foundation has conducted thousands of workshops, both in person and virtually, reaching over half a million first-generation students from marginalised communities across India.
More than 3,000 students have gone on to join over 100 prestigious universities and fellowship programmes in India and abroad. Over 700 alumni are now in dignified employment, with annual salaries rising from roughly an average ₹5-6 lakh to ₹10–15 lakh, transforming not just individual careers but the economic trajectory of their families.
“Our work is about more than just numbers,” Raju told The Logical Indian. “It’s about representation, dignity, and creating a new generation of leaders who will drive systemic change.”
Beyond Merit: The Structural Barriers
Speaking with The Logical Indian, Raju explained the deeper structural problem his foundation is trying to address. India’s caste system, which is over three thousand years old, differs from economic class in one crucial way: it is fixed at birth. In a country of 1.4 billion people, nearly 75 percent of the population is directly affected by it.
Historically underrepresented communities – including Dalits, Adivasis, and nomadic denotified tribes – continue to occupy less than a single-digit share of leadership positions across law, policymaking, media, arts, business, and academia. In higher education, the gap begins even earlier: only two to three out of every ten students from these communities are enrolled at all.
“We often hear about suicide cases and dropouts in this so-called meritocratic system, where many struggle to fit in and succeed,” Raju Kendre said in conversation with The Logical Indian.
Affirmative action exists on paper, but the gaps it was meant to close remain wide. Raju does not frame this as a matter of individual failure. The system, he argues, was never designed with these students in mind. The consequences are deeply tangible: financial pressure, social isolation, a lack of mentorship, and academic spaces that treat difference as a deficiency rather than a strength.
The Chevening Scholarship and the Birth of the Global Scholars Program
The idea for the Global Scholars Program – now the flagship initiative of the Eklavya India Foundation – was born during Raju’s time in London. In 2021, he was selected for the Chevening Scholarship, one of the United Kingdom government’s most prestigious awards for future global leaders. Only about one percent of applicants worldwide receive it. The scholarship was worth nearly $50,000 (nearly 42 lakhs) – an amount that, as Raju often notes, was roughly equivalent to his family’s entire lifetime income.
With it, he pursued a master’s degree at SOAS, University of London.
Sharing his journey from rural Vidarbha to a global university sparked something unexpected. Hundreds of students began reaching out, many from backgrounds similar to his own. If Raju could make it there, they believed, perhaps they could too.
That moment became the seed for the Global Scholars Program.
Today, the initiative has supported more than 500 students pursuing global higher education opportunities. Over 200 students have secured admissions to universities ranked within the top 50 to 200 in the QS World University Rankings, demonstrating the extraordinary potential of students who are often excluded from such pathways.
More than 80 students from these cohorts have collectively secured over $4 million in fully funded scholarships. Students from the programme are now studying across nine countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and several European nations, at universities such as Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and the London School of Economics.
“It shows how education has the power to transform lives and bridge generational socio-economic gaps,” Raju said.
What Comes Next
Beyond the mentorship programmes, Raju’s longer-term ambition is even more expansive. He hopes to build an institutional ecosystem – one that is interdisciplinary, inclusive, and world-class – designed from the ground up to serve students from marginalised communities.
The vision spans every domain that shapes public life: technology, policy, media, law, business, arts. The idea is not a niche institution for a niche problem, but a full-spectrum university that produces leaders across every field society depends on.
The goal is not to create a parallel system, but an institution capable of competing with the very best – one that produces scholars, innovators, artists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers who can reshape the country’s intellectual and leadership landscape.
The vision draws inspiration from Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution, who overcame severe caste discrimination to study at Columbia University and the London School of Economics more than a century ago.
Ambedkar once wrote:
“Education is the milk of the tigress. Whoever drinks it, cannot stay without roaring.”
Raju quotes the line often. It is not hard to see why.
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