Dutch Ambassador Launches Orange Tulip Scholarships at Bengaluru Tech Summit

BENGALURU, December 1, 2018

The 400-year-old Indo-Dutch relations is at an all time high. Indo-Dutch bi-lateral trade and cultural relations founded on the bedrock of its talented people will be enhanced with greater student mobility from India to Netherlands. In this context, Dutch Ambassador, Marten van den Berg launched Orange Tulip scholarship (OTS) during the Bengaluru Tech Summit held on 30th November, 2018 at Bangalore Palace.

“We are happy to formally launch the 2019-20 Orange Tulip Scholarships for Indian students to study in Holland. OTS was piloted in 2017 under Nuffic Netherlands Education Support Office (NESO) India. This year, 19 Dutch universities are offering around 55 scholarships in bachelors and master courses totaling a value of €4,57,290 INR 3.65 cr* approx,” Ambassador Marten van den Berg said.

“India will be home to the world’s youngest workforce by 2027, according to Bloomberg. Netherlands is the second most innovative country and the fourth most competitive economy in the world as per World Economic Forum rankings of 2018,” he added. “Harnessing the young talent, and innovative energy from both our nations, we look forward to create intersections for innovative solutions to global problems through industry-academia collaboration,” he said.

Many universities are offering waiver of tuition fees for various courses, interesting pedagogy eg. Museology (study of museums), Medical and Pharma Drug Innovation, International Leisure etc. to attract Indian students.

OTS puts Karnataka on the talent map for attracting highly qualified Indian students to study in Holland. Around 2,021 Indian students went to Netherlands for higher education in 2017 clocking 30% increase over 2016 in enrollments.

“The Netherlands has a deficit of thousands of engineers. With 5,00,000 engineering pass outs from India and many from Bengaluru, there is immense opportunity to bridge the engineering talent gap in Holland,” says Gert Heijkoop, Consul General of the Kingdom Of the Netherlands in Bengaluru.

OTS was launched in China in 2008 and in successive years in Mexico, Korea, Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. It piloted in 2017 in India with Indian students availing 24 scholarships worth € 541191 or INR 4.1 CR approx* Since 2010-11, the relative importance of German and Chinese students has been decreasing and countries such as UK, India, Indonesia and USA is steadily increasing.

Applications for OTS are now open. Students can visit Nuffic Neso to know the deadlines for various university applications.

Nuffic Neso co-curates peer learning workshop with IIIT Bangalore on Cybersecurity – Increasing incidents of cyber attacks and data protection efforts are underway globally. According to NASSCOM, an IT industry trade body report, this is expected to create $35 billion revenue and employment opportunities for about 1 million Indian professionals by 2025.

Considering the exponential magnitude of the issue, the Government of Karnataka along with partners from industry and academia formed partnership with The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies to further strengthen industry-academia partnership this year. The Prime Ministers of India and The Netherlands formally announced this collaboration during the High Level Trade Mission held in India in May 2018.

Under the Indo-Dutch collaboration, Govt. of Karnataka Dept. IT & BT dept. and The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies organized the first-ever Indo-Dutch Summer School on Cyber Security in The Hague in July 2018. Five brightest minds from IIIT Bangalore were sponsored by the Govt. of Karnataka to attend the summer school in The Hague. The students presented key learnings on Cyber-security and fake news in a workshop co-curated by Nuffic Neso and the IIIT students at BTS.

Other highlights of Study in Holland program

• STEM courses are amongst the most popular for Indian students aspiring to study in Netherlands.
• Per 2016-17 Nuffic Neso stats, over 1283 Indian students applied for Engineering followed by Economics, Business Administration (242) and Sciences (144)
• Amongst the non-technical streams, Agriculture and Environment ranks highest with 120 applications followed by Social Studies (71) and Arts and Culture (60)