The organisation was founded on the belief that quality education is the undeniable right of every child and that children should not be deprived of this just because they do not have access to it or the resources to realise their dreams. Akshara Foundation was established as a Public Charitable Trust in March, 2000. It was conceived as a tripartite partnership between the government, corporate sector and the voluntary sector. They identify the gaps in the universalisation of pre-school and primary education. Provide simple, scalable and sustainable solutions to ramp up through the system. They implement the solution to reasonable scale and with rigorous measurements to demonstrate the impact of the work. They have available information in the public domain in aggregate form and start an advocacy programme to push for universalisation.

Over the last fifteen years, Akshara has run multiple programmes that have all been designed to be comprehensive, scalable, replicable and cost-effective. All Akshara’s programmes are child-centric and are designed to ensure that enrolment in schools increase, drop-outs from schools decrease and that childrens' learning outcomes and overall development improve. In particular, Akshara works in close partnership with the Education Department and the Department of Women and Child Welfare of the Government of Karnataka to supplement existing primary school and pre-primary school programmes.