Press Releases

Kanpur, May 2, 2023: GAIL (India) Limited’s flagship Corporate Social Responsibility initiative for underprivileged students, ‘GAIL Utkarsh’, marked another resounding success this year with all 100 students from its Kanpur centre qualifying for the JEE Mains 2023 examination. Besides this, 47 out of 50 students from the Haldwani centre (Uttarakhand) and 28 of 30 students from the all-girls centre in Varanasi (UP) also cleared the prestigious JEE MAINS Exam.

On the occasion of ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’, GAIL Director (Human Resources) Shri Ayush Gupta encouraged and felicitated all the students at a function here today at Kanpur centre.

GAIL Executive Director (CSR) Shri Anoop Gupta, Director, GAIL Executive Director (HR) Shri Vikas Gupta, Director, Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership (CSRL), Shri Krishnamurti Singh and other senior officials were present on the occasion. CSRL is the implementing partner of ‘GAIL Utkarsh’.

This is the second year in a row when ‘GAIL Utkarsh’ saw 100 % success in JEE Mains from its Kanpur centre. The overall success rates this year is 97.76% by combining all 3 centres i.e. Kanpur, Haldwani and Varanasi in JEE Mains 2023.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Gupta said “GAIL Utkarsh, a project under the education domain of GAIL’s CSR programme, began in Kanpur in 2009 with only 23 students and has come a long way since then. GAIL was the first PSU to replicate or to bring out the concept of Super 30 model (Patna) outside Bihar by establishing its centre at Kanpur in 2009 for the benefit of the underprivileged but meritorious students. Over the years, Kanpur Centre alone has transformed the lives of 1,279 students (till 22-23 session) coming from underprivileged backgrounds. Their parents are mostly farmers, labourers, small business owners, etc. These students have secured admission in IITs/NITs/and other reputed engineering colleges from the Kanpur Centre, Shri Gupta said.

After witnessing the success of its Kanpur centre, GAIL started similar programmes in Uttarakhand (Dwarahat and Srinagar) in 2018-19 and in Varanasi in 2021-22. The Varanasi centre is exclusively for female candidates, both engineering and medical aspirants. Uttarakhand centres have transformed the lives of 370 students starting from the year 2018 and Varanasi centre has transformed the lives of 120 students (including medical) starting from the year 2021. Dwarahat Centre was later shifted to Haldwani to address more number of students due to well-connected routes from everywhere. Applicants are selected on the basis of written test, interview and strict economic criteria (with annual income of their parents not exceeding Rs 4 lakh per annum). Most of them come from rural background. The students are then provided one year of free residential coaching.

After passing their engineering courses, the students have joined various reputed companies and started their professional career with these reputed companies as well as government services/civil services and admission to foreign universities for further studies also.