Pune-based NGO VigyanShaala was recently named a recipient of the prestigious Nikkei Asia Award 2025. It has joined a rare league of Asian change-makers whose work has altered how societies think, build, and progress. Past awardees include Nandan Nilekani, Narayana Murthy and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, among others.
What is VigyanShaala?
Founded by physicists Dr Darshana Joshi and Dr Vijay Venugopalan, VigyanShaala emerged from a conscious decision to return to India after elite scientific training abroad. Dr Joshi earned her PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge. Dr Venugopalan completed his doctorate as a Marie Curie Fellow at Politecnico di Milano and later worked as a visiting scientist at Cambridge. Instead of continuing along conventional global research careers, the couple turned their attention to a question few elite scientists confront: who gets left out of science and why.
What followed was the creation of a grassroots movement that now spans the country. To date, VigyanShaala has impacted over 30,000 students across 330 districts in 28 Indian states, including more than 14,000 girls pursuing pathways in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Its work cuts across geographies and governance structures -- from welfare institutions in Telangana, to collaborations with the Uttarakhand State Council for Science and Technology (UCOST), to hub-and-spoke innovation models being prototyped in Kerala.
At the centre of VigyanShaala’s approach is a reframing of public colleges as units of change, not endpoints of aspiration. The organisation is building a National STEM Champions cadre, where undergraduate students advance their own scientific journeys while mentoring schoolchildren and taking the joy of science back into their communities. The ambition is deliberately audacious: to impact one million young people with the joy of science by 2030.
Why was VigyanShaala chosen for the award?
The Nikkei Asia Award jury recognised VigyanShaala for this redefinition of innovation -- one that places community, inclusion, and long-term capacity-building at the heart of scientific progress. In doing so, the award sends a clear message about Asia’s future. As the region confronts challenges ranging from climate change to technological inequality, solutions will emerge not only from centres of power, but from young people in villages, hill towns, and public colleges who are finally being invited into the story of science.
