Over 130 companies to offer internship to 50,000 candidates

New Delhi: More than 130 companies–including Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bajaj Finance, Tech Mahindra, Jubilant Foodworks, Eicher Motor and Muthoot Finance–have together placed offers for about 50,000 candidates under the PM Internship scheme as of October 9, a senior corporate affairs ministry official said.

This marks a more than three-fold rise from about 16,000 internship offers until October 7, the official told ET. The ministry, which is implementing the PM Internship scheme, has asked companies to upload between October 3 and 10 details of their offers on a portal designed to implement the scheme. The portal will be made available to youths from October 12 to 25 to apply for internships.

The internship opportunities are spread across 22 sectors, mainly in the oil, gas and energy sector. This is followed by offers from travel & hospitality, auto, banking and financial services, infrastructure & construction, manufacturing, aviation and defence, the official said.

Internships are available in over 20 fields, including operations management, manufacturing, maintenance, sales & marketing. The offers are for candidates spread across 650 districts over 36 states and Union territories, the official said.

As part of a pilot project for the scheme, the ministry launched the portal on October 3 through which internship aspirants can apply for a targeted 500 large companies. These companies are selected on the basis of their average annual spending on corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations over three years (through 2022-23). The companies will get the lists of eligible candidates, shortlisted through the use of technology initially, by October 26 and the eligible ones could get internship offers between November 8 and 15 for their acceptance.

The ministry expects 125,000 youths to start internships with the companies by December 2. 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 the 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 internship scheme will be aimed at youths belonging to the economically weaker households with no member earning above ₹8 lakh a year.