Daybreak - Why only 1 in 10 interns join the PM Internship Scheme

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Launched last year with the promise of 10 million internships, the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme was meant to bridge the gap between young graduates and India’s job market. A year on, the numbers tell a different story. Fewer than 9,000 interns have joined so far, even as top companies like TCS and Reliance came on board. Behind the slow start lie deeper problems — poor funding exacerbating a mismatch between corporate expectations and student realities.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. When the government launched the PMIS or the Prime Minister's internship scheme in October last year, the goal was simple. 10 million internships over five years in 500 of the country's top companies.

It was a way to both skill candidates and give them a taste of corporate life over the course of 12 months. And the timing was perfect. Because think about the class of 2025, for example. It won't be a stretch to say that they are walking into a storm. Jobs are scarce, just a degree doesn't cut it anymore, and AI has very quickly gone from being a buzzword to a full-blown competitor. And the non-corporate path? Something like prepping for civil service exams maybe?

Well, that seems unlikely as well, because it's a long and expensive process to fund. This lack of options holds true especially for students from smaller colleges and towns. Economic uncertainty has become the new normal for these new graduates. And it is exactly this growing tension that led to the launch of the Prime Minister's internship scheme in 2024. In fact, the second round just wrapped up a few months ago. To be honest, it did sound like a pretty sweet deal. The government had managed to bring in the likes of SBI Life, Coca-Cola, IBM, Reliance and TCS on board. In a press release, Prime Minister Narendra Modi even celebrated the support for the scheme,

saying, and I'm quoting here, this is a big step towards empowering our youth and building a future-ready workforce. But the numbers that were released by the Parliament in July this year tell a slightly different story. The first phase of the scheme saw over 6,000-6-pack applications. This was for a little less than 1,000-30,000 listings. Basically, to round it off, that's about five applicants for one internship. But only a little more than 80,000 offers were made. Now, you might think, wait, that's not too bad. Well, here's the shocker.

Less than 9,000 interns ended up actually joining these offers. So what went wrong here? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Retriever. and every day of the week, my co-host, Nikha Sharma and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday, the 14th of October. Most jensis would scoff at the idea of interning purely for experience today.

In this economy, is something you're likely to hear if you dare put forward the concept. They're not entirely wrong. With rising inflation and an increasing amount of students taking out education loans or growing into breadwinner roles for their family, they can hardly afford to put in work for free, which is why all internships under the scheme are paid. An intern begins with a one-time grant of rupees 6,000 as a kind of joining bonus, and rupees 5,000 as a monthly stipend. Out of this, rupees 4,500 is transferred directly to their bank account by the government,

and the remaining rupees 500 is paid by the company from its CSR or social responsibility fund. companies can pay more if they choose. But at the moment, there's no official data on this and nothing in the scheme encourages them to do so. I think most of us can guess where this is headed. Rupee's 5,000 per month is hardly enough for a year's worth of work, a duration during which presumably the intern would be taking on additional responsibilities and upskilling as they learn.

Can you imagine living on rupees 5,000 in a city like, say, Bangalore, where a single two-kilometer auto ride could cost you nothing less than rupees 50, you're easily blowing 30% of your budget on just getting to this job. And we're not even talking about the cost of possible relocation, rent, electricity or sustenance. Basically, it'd be impossible to work in a tier one city with a stipend like this without family support. And here's where things get even more complicated. To be eligible for this scheme, the candidate's household income has to be less than 8 lakh rupees per. Anem. You can see the contradiction here. With this kind of a cap, the students applying for the

scheme cannot come from families that could possibly support them while they work. So it's no wonder that the scheme isn't seeing as many applicants as it would like to. My colleague, the Ken reporter De Banjali Biswas, spoke to some prospective candidates who decided not to apply and a few scaling and recruitment sector executives to understand what was going wrong. Two of the candidates who decided not to apply backed out because of four. flow stipends. The third was lucky enough to secure a much more lucrative apprenticeship through NAPS, or the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme with a pay of rupees 20,000 per month. De Banjali also spoke to Nealab Shukla, the chief business officer of staffing firm

Career Net. He told her that compared to the options PMS provides, the graduates actually find that they're better of working in their native towns, even if it is at lesser-known companies in the unstructured sector. Thankfully, a staff. Standing Committee report on the scheme has flagged this issue as a major gap to be addressed. It stated that, without adequate support for living expenses, candidates from remote or underserved regions may be unable to participate, thereby hindering the program's inclusivity and its potential to attract a diverse pool of talent. Increased industry contribution and support would certainly be the way to go.

For instance, in the case of NAPS, the government covers only 25% of the stipend, which is capped at rupees 1,500 per month. The rest is covered by the organisation. Now, funding issues are just the glaring ones. Certain systemic ones remain to be addressed. More on this in the next segment. When the scheme was first announced last year, we reported that the news was making companies uneasy.

You see, there was a growing concern that a large influx of interns would strain company resources, and the infrastructure would not be able to handle it. The head of talent skilling at a multinational tech firm told Debanjali that the pressure to train interns is substantial. It requires leadership bandwidth and dedicated teams that will deal with these interns. According to the latest numbers, though, the fear of infrastructural failure has remained largely unrealized. However, another major point of friction stays. Basically, it's doubtful that companies even have the kind of roles that the scheme expects to provide.

Even if they did, it also remains to be seen if these applicants can meet the necessary requirements. Anil Sahasrabuthi, the chairman of the National Technology Forum and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, shared these concerns with us. He noted that continuous engagement with prominent teams in the industry has shown that while students have theoretical knowledge, they lack experiential knowledge. And bridging that gap requires more than just an internship. Krishnavich, the VP at Staffing Services firm, Team Lease Digital, told Di Banjali that a strong academic background that has kept up with market demand is a must. So, if relevant positions and training manpower are both in short supply, the concern remains. Will interns who finish this internship actually acquire valuable skills?

Neelab Shukla, who we introduced earlier, says that this friction arises from the fundamental mismatch between the desires the government is trying to fulfill, and the gap between available talent. Obviously, most people want your typical white-collar job. Glass cubicles, high-rises, the works. But the actual workforce requirements are, well, less glamorous. They're mostly in factories and fields. Now, not everyone can be a software engineer.

But also, not everyone wants to go to industrial training institutes and get trained into a formalized electrician's career. Of course, it means that most of the opportunities offered under the scheme fall into this less glamorous category. And the companies that are hiring with the scheme are mostly looking to fill up the bottom of the pyramid rules. So what does the post-internship scenario look like? Well, as we already saw with the TCS layoffs, general economic uncertainty and AI advancement

has been pushing companies into massive restructuring. Of course, some companies might be willing to onboard interns. After all, it's hardly much of a pressure on their pockets. But turning them into full-time employees? That's an entirely different question. Unfortunately, other government skilling programs have already started running into this problem. Take, for instance, phase three of the Pradanmanthri Kaushal Vikas Yochanah. This is a flagship youth training scheme that the Skill Development Ministry launched in 2015,

training over 4,000 candidates. That's obviously a very encouraging number. But when it came to placements, less than 40,000, of them made it. The standing committee we mentioned before made note of this lack as well, and that's good because it means they're ready to adapt. They stated that while the scheme was still in its pilot phase, the internship employee conversion rate should be a key success indicator. They recommended a system to monitor and track this metric and increase the efficacy of the program in creating career opportunities that align with industry demands. The thing is,

Official statements on PMIS say all the right things. Yes, there is a critical need to equip India's youth with the skills they need to thrive in the job market. And yes, they do need help with gaining real world experience while benefiting from financial support. But statements can't be enough. What the youth of India really needs is to see these platitudes actually start reflecting in the scheme's design. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news. news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of

premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague, Rachel Vargis and edited by Rajiv Sien.