From A Village In East Champaran To Georgetown: Bihar Boy Wins Rs 3.5 Cr Scholarship
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Adarsh grew up in Puraina Sarottar, a small village in East Champaran district of Bihar. Not the kind of place that typically produces students heading to one of the world’s most selective universities. But this month, the 18-year-old from Motihari found out he had been awarded a full scholarship to Georgetown University in Qatar — worth around ?3.5 crore — covering four years of tuition, accommodation, food, and all other education-related expenses.
At Georgetown, he will study politics, economics, and public policy, with the university’s global programme giving him time across three campuses — Qatar, Washington D.C., and Italy.
What makes Adarsh’s story worth sitting with is not just the scholarship. It is what he was already doing before it came. At an age when most students are figuring out their board exam strategy, Adarsh had already founded Skillzo, an organisation that has reached over 20,000 underprivileged students across Bihar through career guidance, mentoring, and skill training. He was not waiting to finish his education before trying to fix something he saw broken around him. He started while he was still in the middle of his own schooling.
That work got noticed well beyond Bihar. In 2025, Adarsh was named the winner of the Global Student Prize — one of the most competitive student awards in the world. He was selected from nearly 11,000 applicants across 148 countries and received USD 100,000, roughly ?88 lakh, at a ceremony in London. He was 18 years old.
The Georgetown scholarship is, in one sense, a continuation of a path that has been building for a while. He had earlier received a full scholarship to complete the International Baccalaureate programme at Jayshree Periwal International School in Jaipur — itself no small achievement for a student from a village in East Champaran with no family history of elite schooling. He has also served as a judge at national and international competitions in education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
On receiving the Georgetown scholarship, Adarsh spoke about the people who made it possible — his mother, his teachers, his friends and mentors. He specifically thanked Second Chance founder Joan Liu, Ayush Periwal, and the JPIS family for their support along the way. He was clear about where he intends to bring all of it back. The education, the international exposure, the networks — his stated goal is to use them in service of the people of Bihar and India more broadly.
For a young man who started by helping 20,000 students from his home district find a direction, that is probably not just something he said for the cameras.
