NEW DELHI: Close to 50 companies – ranging from TCS and Tech Mahindra to L&T, Apollo Tyres. Titan, Divis Labs and Britannia – have offered over 13,000 internship opportunities to youth through the PM Internship scheme portal opened for corporate registrations last week.
So far, around 200 companies have registered with the ministry of corporate affairs, which is managing the scheme targeting over 1.2 lakh internships during the current financial year.Mahindra & Mahindra, L&T, the Tata group and Jubilant Foodworks are among those offering the highest number of internships so far, sources said.
“The opportunities are spread across sectors including banking and financial services, oil, energy FMCG, manufacturing, travel and hospitality,” said a source.
The internship scheme, announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the last budget, is seeking to provide internships to one crore youth as part of an exercise to bridge the skills gap. Under the scheme, the top 500 companies by CSR spending during the last three years are in focus, along with their vendors and suppliers, with those outside the list also eligible to join voluntarily.
The sources said the work profiles include sales and marketing, production and manufacturing and operations management, among others and are spread across 179 districts.
In the first phase, starting Sept 3, the window has been opened for companies from the list of 500, to register on the dedicated portal and also list out the internships that they are willing to offer under the scheme targeted at unemployed youth between the age of 21-24 years. Following this, registrations for candidates will be opened Saturday. The idea is to let the first set of interns be on the shop floor by the first week of Dec for the one-year programme, which will see monthly payments of Rs 5,000 along with a one-time transfer of Rs 6,000.
Based on the learnings, ministry of corporate affairs will finalise the scheme for cabinet approval to enhance the coverage. The list put out on the website for the scheme shows the 500 partner companies and comprises Reliance Industries, TCS, HDFC Bank, ONGC, Infosys, NTPC, Tata Steel, ITC, IndianOil and ICICI Bank among the top 10.