Government Funding Schemes

A scheme is the umbrella. It is the policy decision — a ministry, a department or a state government sets aside money for a purpose and writes the rules. What you apply to is almost never the scheme itself. It is one call for applications run under that scheme, usually by an incubator, a university or an agency the scheme has empanelled.

This distinction is the single most useful thing to understand before you start, because it explains why searching for a scheme name often leads to a government page with no apply button.

As of 18 September 2026 we track 67 umbrella schemes — 23 central, 13 state and 29 run by private institutions — and 208 individual programs running under them, of which 45 are currently taking applications. One scheme can be running dozens of separate calls at any time.

The largest central schemes work entirely through intermediaries. In our catalogue TIDE 2.0, run by the Ministry of Electronics and IT, has 33 separate programs under it — each one a different incubator running its own call, with its own deadline, its own form and its own selection panel. RKVY-RAFTAAR has 15. The NIDHI family from the Department of Science & Technology has programs spread across NIDHI-SSP (12), NIDHI-SSS (8), NIDHI-iTBI (8) and NIDHI-PRAYAS (5). iDEX, for defence, has 11.

What this means in practice:

• "Applications for TIDE 2.0" is not a thing you can do. You apply to a specific incubator's TIDE 2.0 call, and whether you are eligible depends partly on that incubator's terms, not only on the scheme's.
• Deadlines are per call, not per scheme. A scheme being "open" tells you almost nothing about whether there is something you can apply to this month.
• Where you are matters more than it looks. Incubators recruit regionally. Two identical companies in different cities often have completely different lists.

Each scheme page here lists the programs running under it, so you can see the actual calls rather than the policy.

Central schemes (23 in our catalogue) are run by ministries and their agencies — DPIIT, the Department of Science & Technology, the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the Ministry of MSME, BIRAC for biotech, the Department of Defence Production for iDEX. They are open to companies anywhere in India, they are the most competitive, and they are almost always routed through empanelled incubators.

State schemes (13) come out of a state's startup or industrial policy. They are usually the easiest money to actually receive, because many of them are reimbursements rather than contests — you spend, you file, you claim. They are also closed to you entirely if your company is not registered in that state. Our catalogue currently holds schemes from 13 states including Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh.

Institutional schemes (29) are run by incubators, universities, corporates and foundations. They are not government money, but they behave similarly from your side — a defined call, a written application, a panel — and they are often less crowded.

Every scheme sets its own rules and the per-scheme pages here carry the real ones. But the questions almost all of them ask are the same, and knowing them makes the first application much faster than the second:

• Who you are — your registered entity, when it was incorporated, who the founders are, what share they hold.
• Where you are registered — decisive for every state scheme and for many central calls that run through a regional incubator.
• What stage you are at — idea, prototype, product in market, revenue. Most schemes target one or two of these, and a strong application at the wrong stage still fails.
• What the money is for — a work plan with milestones. Government money is generally released against milestones rather than paid upfront, and the plan you submit becomes the schedule you are held to.
• What you have already raised — some schemes exclude companies past a funding threshold, and some exclude a company that has taken money from another government scheme for the same work.

The last one catches people. If you have already drawn on one central scheme for a piece of work, read the next one's terms carefully before you apply for the same thing again.

DPIIT recognition is the Startup India registration. It is free, it is done online, and it unlocks a specific list of things — the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, the income-tax exemption under Section 80-IAC if you apply and qualify separately, self-certification on some labour and environment rules, and a number of state benefits that use it as their own entry condition.

It is worth having. It is not, however, a general precondition for government funding: plenty of central and state schemes accept companies without it, and some accept applicants who have not yet incorporated at all.

Get it early anyway. It costs nothing, the process is short, and a handful of the better-funded schemes will not look at you without it.

1. Start with your state. Open your state's scheme first. If it has an active startup or IT policy, the reimbursements under it are the least competitive money you will find.
2. Then the central schemes that match your sector. BIRAC for biotech and health, iDEX for defence, RKVY-RAFTAAR for agriculture, TIDE 2.0 and the NIDHI family for technology broadly.
3. Open the scheme page, not the scheme's website. The page here lists the individual calls running under the scheme, with their deadlines. That is what you can actually apply to.
4. Check the stage before you read anything else. It is the fastest disqualifier and the one people ignore longest.
5. Write one application properly rather than six quickly. These panels read a great many applications that were obviously written for a different scheme.