Palsamudran Philanthropy Initiative: Creating Opportunity, From First Lessons To Frontier Science

Some of the most important interventions in a young person’s life happen through education. For one child, opportunity begins with learning to read confidently in a government-school classroom. For another, it may come later through a chance to discover what research means.

Through the Palsamudram Philanthropy Initiative, Sanjay Palsamudram and Sangna Lakshmi work across this spectrum, strengthening foundational learning for children who risk being left behind, while creating advanced opportunities for young people with exceptional promise. Their work is different in form but addresses a connected problem: potential exists in every child, while access to opportunity is not available to all.

In 2013, Sangna co-founded Step Up For India (SUFI), born from a recognition of a persistent challenge in non-English-medium government schools: many children in grade five cannot comfortably read 3-letter English words. The consequences extend far beyond language. When students struggle with foundational skills, their confidence, academic progress, and future opportunities are all affected.

Through structured bilingual learning, SUFI helps children build English literacy while strengthening their mother tongue. Importantly, the model works through government-school teachers, equipping them with practical curricula while building their capacity to support students effectively.

SUFI has reached 850,000 children and trained 36,000 teachers across seven states through programmes addressing the dual goals of bridging children’s gaps in English and supporting government-prescribed textbooks. SUFI’s goal is to ensure that a child’s location or schooling background does not become an early barrier to aspiration.

Sanjay’s work begins at another point in the educational journey. He believes that talented students should encounter meaningful scientific opportunities before making critical academic and career choices.

That belief is personal. As a first-generation high school student, Sanjay experienced how STEM education altered his journey, leading to an exemplary career in semiconductors, entrepreneurship and deep-tech investing. Subsequently, his daughter’s experience at MIT’s Research Science Institute inspired him to explore whether more students in India could access a similarly immersive research environment.

That idea became RSI-India, launched at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru in 2025 after nearly six years of institution-building and collaboration. The cost-free, six-week programme enables exceptional Class XI students to work with leading IISc scientists and experience science not simply as a subject to study, but as something they can actively investigate and contribute to.

The same philosophy shapes Sanjay’s wider involvement in education, connecting young people and institutions with environments that broaden what they believe is possible. He supports student research and national science competitions, laboratory exposure for girls from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities through the KaLiSu initiative at IISc, contributes to Karnataka’s Higher Education Transformation initiative to set up Centres of Excellence focusing on R&D and student employability, and advises IISc on industry-orientated MTech curricula.

At first glance, foundational literacy and advanced scientific research may appear to belong to entirely different worlds. But Sanjay and Sangna see the common thread blending them: philanthropy has its greatest impact not by choosing between these points, but by making more of them possible to all of young India.