Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and Chairperson of the Central Square Foundation (CSF), one of the most important contemporary education philanthropies in India. His work to successfully champion Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) has made him one of the most influential education philanthropists in India in the last decade.

Founded in 2012, CSF played a catalytic role in centring FLN as the primary objective of the K-12 education ecosystem in India, which serves 250 million children. Dhawan launched CSF shortly after India enacted the Right to Education Act, which guaranteed free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14. But while access to education has become almost universal, India still suffers from poor quality education being delivered, with low learning levels and high dropout rates.

Dhawan brought to CSF a focus on data to objectively analyse areas in which private philanthropic investment could catalyse systemic change and he made strategic investments in a number of NGOs to increase their capacity to work on innovative approaches to improve FLN outcomes.

CSF’s initiatives span innovation, policy and practice, and focus on learning impact at scale. In 2015, CSF began a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (their first international education investment) centred on FLN. By 2020, the Indian government had issued a new National Education Policy that focused on achieving FLN and the central government rolled out the NIPUN Bharat Mission to implement FLN-oriented programmes. While creating systemic alignment around common goals, CSF is working with central, state and district-level governments to enhance their capacity to implement and monitor progress on these FLN initiatives through funding and staffing project management units. CSF is now working in half of India's 28 states and at the district level in six of India's largest states.

Additionally, CSF prioritises EdTech integration, aiming to deploy digital solutions for in-class and at-home learning and establish evidence-based practices while
harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence to augment learning outcomes. CSF is deeply committed to Early Childhood Education reforms, recognising the critical role it plays in laying a strong groundwork for children's learning journies, thereby augmenting FLN outcomes. CSF also works in the area of school governance, extending its system-level approach to children in both private and government schools, to strengthen the country's education landscape.

Dhawan is also the Founding Chairperson of Ashoka University and was recently
appointed to the governing board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before his second career as a philanthropist, he was among India’s most successful private equity investors. He founded and ran ChrysCapital, the country’s leading private equity firm. He is also Founder-CEO of The Convergence Foundation, a grant-makingincubator that builds institutions focused on India's economic growth.