Established in 1976 by Indoo Shivdasani, the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation is a philanthropic organisation that provides scholarships, grants and awards to individuals for their higher education within and outside India. Through its funding programmes, the organisation seeks to aid professional, scientific, artistic and cultural development by offering support in art, theatre, music, sports and ecology.

As a part of its dedicated programme to fund the arts, the foundation facilitates residencies for artists in India and abroad. The Inlaks Fine Art Award is given to 4–5 artists annually and it offers support to KHOJ’s residency programme for young artists called Peers. It also supports a museum professional each year to be able to attend the International Training Programme at the British Museum.

In the past, the Foundation has had partnerships with international educational institutions like King’s India Institute at the King’s College London, Goldsmith’s, London, and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA). It supported and funded an annual Curatorial Lab at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the Inlaks FICA Goldsmith scholarship and the International Studio and Curatorial Program, and the Mumbai Art Room. It collaborated with the Asia Art Archive (AAA) in India to offer the AAA-Inlaks Art Grant 2020, which offered a grant to art practitioners working in tandem with archival material, libraries and databases. It awarded art writing grants in collaboration with TAKE on Art through the Inlaks TAKE on Writing Travel Grants and two editions of Critical Writing Ensembles were also held in 2015 and 2016. The Foundation has also sponsored projects and initiatives for prominent international art festivals such as the Venice Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale and the Dhaka Art Summit.