Padmashree Dr. D.Y. Patil is the former Governor of Bihar, Tripura and West Bengal and a well-known Educationist and Philanthropist from an agricultural town Kolhapur in the state of Maharashtra. He strongly believes that youth in India needed a greater platform that offers multiple opportunities to educate themselves across geographies. Under his visionary leadership, the DY Patil Group has taken giant leaps in the fields of education, healthcare & sports under his mentorship.
Dr. D.Y. Patil envisioned a goal of spreading education across the length and breadth of India by taking steps in a direction to craft each and every institute. He founded the first engineering college called Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology in Navi Mumbai in the year 1983, offering a bachelors degree in engineering to students. Since then, there has been no turning back and today Dr. D.Y. Patil has founded more than three deemed universities with more than 150 independent institutions in India.
Another area, where Dr. Patil has been one of India’s leading investors, is healthcare, where Dr. Patil believes that every Indian should be able to get basic healthcare facilities free of charge in order to sustain a standard livelihood. In the last 35 years, Dr. D.Y. Patil has been successful in creating multiple healthcare facilities catering to the lower-income group and hosting several charitable health & education schemes for the general population.
Following are the list of awards and honors that are bestowed upon him:
- Government of India conferred the prestigious “Padmashree” award in recognition of his work in the field of education in 1991.
- Arizona University, United States awarded an honorary doctorate degree in 1988.
- The Nottingham Trent University Kingdom awarded an honorary doctorate degree in appreciation of his contribution to the cause of education in 1996.
- Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubhaneswar awarded D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) in 2012.
- Awarded the ‘Man of the Year 2005’ by the American Biographical Institute, U.S.A.
- “Samajshree” title and Manapatra (Certificate of Honour) awarded by Kolhapur Municipal Corporation in the year 2000.
- Honoured by ‘Cultural Doctorate in Philosophy of Education’ of World University Roundtable, Arizona, U.S.A
Dr. D.Y. Patil truly believes that in an accelerating global enterprise, the best way to empower the youth of the country would be to make good educational facilities available to them. He feels that the possibilities of the future generations are defined by the world we choose to create for them & hence the best way to empower the youth would be to create an ecosystem that offers equal opportunities for them to learn, grow and excel.
”We started our education journey close to four decades ago in the 1980s with the idea of making good education accessible for our youth. Throughout the course of this long and rewarding journey, our endeavour has been to build a diverse yet welcoming community that can be instrumental in shaping the future of our country. As the world grows smaller and more connected, we’re beginning to live and work with people who don’t look like us, don’t think like us, don’t come from the same place as us and don’t share the same values and principles as us. In this converging of the world into one large community, lies the biggest opportunity of the current generation. The opportunity to come together, exchange perspectives and collectively solve problems and do good for the entire human race.”