Internship scheme's new pilot gets more takers post rejig
New Delhi: The PM Internship Scheme is now starting to draw more takers after a slow start and a slew of changes. About 40,000 candidates have joined its third pilot round so far, two-and-a-half times the total turnout of the first two rounds, according to two people in the know. The development indicates a positive response to scheme changes, including higher stipends, relaxed age limits and more flexible internship durations.
The positive response has encouraged the corporate affairs ministry, which runs the scheme, to consider rolling out the full programme next year without any further pilot round, the people said.
Announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union budget for FY25, the PM Internship Scheme aims to improve youth employability by offering practical work experience in companies, with an initial target of 10 million internships over five years. The corporate affairs ministry had launched the first round of the pilot in October 2024 and the second in January 2025.
The third round of the scheme took off in March and will run through December. The first two rounds had seen a muted response of a total of 16,060 candidates taking up internships, the people said.
More than 150,000 internship opportunities have been posted by companies on the PM Internship portal so far in the third round, as against a total of about 245,000 postings in the first two rounds, the people said.
While 8,760 candidates had joined in the first round, compared with the opportunities for about 127,000, another 7,300 took up internships under the second round when there were 118,000 postings.
In the first round, there were 280 companies that made internship offers. In the second round, the number of participating companies went up to 327. In this third round, the number has risen to over 500, said the people in the know.
Top companies of the country, including Reliance Industries Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services, HDFC Bank, Maruti Suzuki, Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra, ITC, Tata Consumer, ONGC, Oil India, Infosys and NTPC, have been participating in the scheme, the people added.
Queries related to the jump in participation in the third round, emailed to the corporate affairs ministry late Wednesday, remained unanswered.
The corporate affairs ministry had initially selected 500 companies that spent the most against their corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations, to post their internship offers through the government portal. Now, the rules have been relaxed to accommodate more companies.
The government’s internship scheme is key to narrowing the gap between industry needs and job-seekers’ skills by placing eligible candidates as interns in factories and offices. Employability remains a challenge in India, where millions hold degrees and yet the industry reports a shortage of skilled workers.
Weak participation and high dropouts in the initial pilot rounds delayed the rollout of the full internship programme. Consequently, the allocation for last fiscal year was slashed to ₹526 crore in the revised estimate from the budgeted ₹10,831 crore. It was raised to ₹4,788 crore for this fiscal.
What has changed
For the third pilot round, the government raised the monthly stipend to ₹9,000 from ₹5,000 earlier. The government pays 90% of the fixed minimum monthly stipend and a fixed amount of ₹6,000 in two instalments to each intern while the companies are free to top it up.
Companies are mandated to bear only 10% of the minimum monthly stipend, and they can show it as part of their mandated CSR spending.
The minimum eligible age for candidates has been reduced in the third round to 18 years from 21, while the upper limit has been raised to 25 years from 24.
The government has also revised the internship duration to six or nine months from one year, in line with requests from services companies, acceding to industry requests. Final-year graduate and post-graduate students are also now eligible to apply.
“Higher financial support, wider eligibility and greater flexibility in internship duration have lowered some of the barriers to entry in the third round,” said Shantanu Rooj, chief executive and founder at TeamLease Edtech, an employability and online programme management firm.
The focus must now shift from creating more internship opportunities to ensuring that candidates find relevant roles and complete them, Rooj said. “Companies should also view internships as structured talent pipelines rather than short-term CSR interventions,” he added.
To bolster the supply side by expanding the pool of companies eligible to offer internships, the corporate affairs ministry is also at an advanced stage of involving entities in special economic zones (SEZs), global capability centres (GCCs) and select small and medium enterprises, said the people aware of the development.
About 20 companies, nominated by state governments, are also being allowed to post offers under the scheme after the Union corporate affairs ministry’s nod.
The government has already expanded the number of eligible sectors for the scheme to 31 from 25. The added sectors include electronics; engineering and design services; facilities management and business services; logistics, supply chain and shipping; and workforce solutions and human resources.
About 11 million youth in India will be entering the labour market every year over the next two decades, as per a June 2026 World Bank statement. India's joblessness was at 5% in September, unchanged from the previous month, as per Periodic Labour Force Survey data.