Samriddhi – Scheme for Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Students for Setting Start-Ups

Samriddhi (AICTE) is a central government scheme launched by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) under the Ministry of Education. It was created to provide structured entrepreneurship opportunities to Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students by enabling them to design, launch, and operate their own startups — either during their final year of education or after completing their formal degree or diploma. The scheme operates through approved institutes: AICTE provides ₹20 lakh in one-time financial assistance to a qualifying institute, which in turn selects nine registered SC/ST student startups and gives each ₹2 lakh in non-refundable seed money. An additional ₹2 lakh covers the institute's selection process costs, and ₹1 lakh per year is released as a recurring grant over the two-year scheme duration.

Institutes must be AICTE-approved and have been operating for at least 10 years. The applying institute must have a functioning incubation centre with at least 5 years of active operations, and must have maintained an average enrollment of at least 50 SC/ST students over the preceding 3 years. The institute must also comply with the Tribal Sub Plan and Scheduled Caste Sub Plan guidelines of the Government of India, and must have a dedicated faculty serving as Principal Coordinator. For student beneficiaries selected by the institute: the student must be in the final year of their degree or diploma course, and must have a registered company or startup in their name. Startups already receiving benefits from other AICTE or Government of India schemes are not eligible.

The scheme provides a total of ₹20,00,000 in one-time financial assistance to the host institute. Out of this, ₹2,00,000 is allocated to each of the nine selected SC/ST student startups as non-refundable seed money (9 × ₹2L = ₹18L). The remaining ₹2,00,000 covers the institute's expenditure for conducting the selection process. Additionally, ₹1,00,000 per year is disbursed as a recurring grant to the institute for the two-year scheme duration. Non-recurring funds (100%) are released at the time of award.

Applications are submitted online through the AICTE Portal (AQIS — AICTE Quality Improvement Schemes). The institute logs in using existing AICTE credentials, navigates to the AQIS Application screen, verifies auto-populated institute details, and manually fills editable fields including PAN, district, and email. Bank details must be entered and confirmed before starting a new AQIS application. After selecting "SAMRIDDHI" from the scheme dropdown, the Principal Investigator's faculty details are added and the required tabs — Application Details, Budget Estimates (Non-Recurring Samriddhi), Academic Credentials of Coordinator, Justification of Project, Credentials of Institute, and Budget Recurring — must all be completed. Once all data is entered, the Validate Application button confirms completeness.

The scheme runs for a total duration of 2 years. The host institute must establish an internal selection committee to identify and fund exactly 9 registered SC/ST student startups. The institute is required to set up a feedback mechanism to assess programme impact, and may update its curriculum based on feedback received after each programme cycle. A dedicated full-time regular faculty member must serve as Principal Coordinator, supported by dedicated staff, to ensure smooth functioning throughout.