Somaiya Vidyavihar University (SVU) is a state private university located in Vidyavihar, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Established under the Somaiya Vidyavihar University Act of the Government of Maharashtra, the university brings together several long-standing institutions of the Somaiya Vidyavihar trust under a single unitary university framework.
| Type | State private university |
|---|---|
| Location | Vidyavihar, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Country | India |
| Parent body | Somaiya Vidyavihar Trust |
| Founder figure | Karamshi Jethabhai Somaiya |
The university traces its origins to the educational and philanthropic activities of Padma Bhushan Karamshi Jethabhai Somaiya, an industrialist associated with the sugar industry in western India, who founded the Somaiya Vidyavihar Trust in the 1950s. Over the following decades, the trust set up a cluster of schools, colleges, and specialised institutes on a single campus in the eastern Mumbai suburb of Vidyavihar, situated adjacent to the Vidyavihar railway station on the Central Railway line.
Among the constituent institutions historically associated with the campus are the K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering, the K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management, the K. J. Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce, the K. J. Somaiya College of Science and Commerce, and institutes dedicated to applied sciences, medical sciences, polytechnic studies, and Sanskrit and Indic studies, among others. Several of these colleges were earlier affiliated to the University of Mumbai before being brought under the unitary university structure.
Somaiya Vidyavihar University was constituted as a self-financed state private university in Maharashtra, enabling it to offer its own degree programmes and govern its constituent schools directly. The transition consolidated the previously affiliated colleges into faculty-based schools within a single academic and administrative structure.
The university is organised into multiple schools covering a broad range of disciplines, including:
Programmes are offered at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels.
The Somaiya Vidyavihar campus spans a large contiguous area in Vidyavihar, Mumbai, and is one of the larger educational campuses within the city. It hosts academic blocks, hostels, sports facilities, libraries, and research centres, along with the schools earlier run as autonomous colleges. The proximity of the Vidyavihar suburban railway station makes the campus directly accessible by Mumbai's local train network.
The university is regarded as one of the prominent private higher-education establishments in Mumbai. By unifying its long-running engineering, management, arts, science, and Indic studies institutes, it aims to facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and research while continuing the educational mission of the Somaiya trust.