Schaeffler India

Check the current round first

• The company's own website does not describe its social innovation fellowship, so confirm the next round and its terms with the company before planning around it.
• Press reports describe the fellowship as open to individuals, startups and organisations aged 18 to 35 with a functional prototype. Check that against the current call.

What the reports say about earlier rounds

• The 2025 round was reported with ten fellows, aged 18 to 35, applying from across India.

Most CSR projects are not for startups

• The company's CSR pages describe skilling, healthcare, education and heritage projects for students, youth, villages and children. None of them is described as startup funding.

Schaeffler India Limited is the Indian arm of the Schaeffler Group and has been incorporated since 1962. Its contact office is in Baner, Pune, Maharashtra, and its public work is corporate social responsibility in skilling, healthcare, education and heritage, across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Who runs it

The Group is managed by the Board of Managing Directors of Schaeffler AG. The company's contact address is on the 15th floor of Amar Sadanand Tech Park in Baner, Pune.

Skilling

STEP, the Schaeffler Technical Enhancement Program, is a technical training centre inaugurated on 29 March 2018 at Chakan, Pune. Its six-month course ends with NSDC certificates. The company says 79 students, 56 boys and 23 girls, from the areas around Chakan have enrolled to date. The centre aims to empower differently-enabled youth.

Healthcare

A Mobile Health Unit brings preventive and curative health care to villages at the doorstep, free of cost, through periodic visits. It covers 25 villages of Savli and 26 villages of Padra and Sindhrot blocks in Vadodara, and 35 selected villages near Talegaon and in remote tribal areas of Maval block in Pune. The company says the unit has covered over a lakh of people.

Education and heritage

Under its HOPE Engineering Scholarship, the company sponsored the full engineering course of students selected on academic merit from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The company says 32 students were awarded in 2019. The scholarship page describes the 2019-20 launch and does not give a current intake or an application route.

The company has also supported a school that started with 40 students in 2017 and now has 85, by its own count. Quest on Wheels, a Volvo bus the company invested in, takes children from government schools, slum areas, communities and shelter homes on educational trips to heritage and learning sites.

Awards

Its CSR work has been recognised with the B.G. Deshmukh CSR Award from the Maratha Chambers of Commerce & Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) in October 2016, for the Vidya Niketan initiative in Tamil Nadu, and with the Gujarat State CSR Awards 2018 for its NITARA project. The True Impact Award for infrastructure and livelihood projects for differently-enabled people is also listed for its work with Mook Dhwani Trust, with no year given.

Social innovation fellowship

Press reports from 2025 and 2026 describe a Social Innovation Fellowship, run with IIMA Ventures, that selects social innovators for a grant, mentorship and a 24-week programme. The reports give different names for the fellowship and different first-year dates. The company's own website does not describe it, so confirm the current round and its terms with the company before relying on any date.