PM internship scheme moves at full throttle

Large companies such as Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, ONGC and Maruti Suzuki India are joining the PM Internship Scheme, with the government likely breaching its initial target of facilitating internships to 125,000 candidates under the initiative by December 2, a senior official said.

Already, companies have together placed internship offers for 90,849 candidates, marking a many-fold increase from about 16,000 until October 7, the official told ET. Many companies are still uploading offers on the portal designed to implement the scheme, he added.

The ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), which is implementing the scheme, had asked companies to upload details of their offers on the portal from October 3.


The portal will be made available to aspirants from October 12-25 to apply for internships, and by December 2, the eligible ones will actually start internships with the companies.

Some other prominent companies that will offer internships are Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bajaj Finance, Tech Mahindra, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Max Life Insurance, Jubilant Foodworks, Eicher Motor and Muthoot Finance, officials said earlier.

Once the initial pilot project under the scheme is rolled out with targeted internship offers to 125,000 aspirants by December 2, the ministry will keep expanding it to accommodate more candidates, factoring in learnings from the initial experiences.

Under the scheme, the government aims to make internship opportunities available to 10 million youths at 500 companies over five years. The Confederation of Indian Industry has conducted industry interactions with the MCA for this initiative.

The companies are selected on the basis of average annual spending on corporate social responsibility obligations over three years through 2022-23.

The internship opportunities are spread across about two dozen sectors, including oil & gas, energy, travel & hospitality, auto, banking & financial services, infrastructure & construction, aviation and defence, officials have said.


The offers are for candidates across various states and UTs.

Each selected intern will get a monthly allowance of ₹5,000 for one year, on top of a one-time aid of ₹6,000. The government will bear ₹54,000 towards monthly allowance and one-time aid, spending ₹60,000 for each intern. The participating companies will bear the training cost and 10% of the monthly allowance, amounting to ₹6,000 for each candidate, from their CSR funds.

The scheme is aimed at youths belonging to the economically weaker households with no member earning above ₹8 lakh a year.