E-YUVA Scheme: BIRAC’s E-YUVA Fellows (for under graduate students)(E-YUVAS:BIRACE-YUVAF(UGS))

Overview

About E-YUVAS:BIRACE-YUVAF(UGS)

BIRAC runs two fellowship categories under the E-YUVA scheme, and only one of them lets students stay where they already are. BIRAC's E-YUVA Fellows is the undergraduate category: a team keeps its research running in its own college or university lab, draws on an E-YUVA Centre when the work needs equipment the college does not have, and spends a compulsory three to four weeks at that centre or its knowledge partner during the fellowship year, per the E-YUVA scheme document, Version 1.1.

The centres are the machinery the whole scheme runs on. Each one sits inside a university or institute set-up, is mentored by a BIRAC BioNEST supported bio-incubator, and holds a pre-incubation space of 3,000 sq ft or more with equipment for basic research and experimentation by selected students. Their reach is not uniform across calls: BIRAC held 19 E-YUVA Centres when it issued its third national call, and opened that call for 12 of them only.

The money moves in two directions at once, and that is the detail most worth understanding before a team applies. Each student's stipend lands in the student's own account. The research grant never touches the students; it goes to the institute and is operated by the mentor. BIRAC itself is a public sector enterprise set up by the Department of Biotechnology, and the E-YUVA scheme page is where its calls, guidelines and selected-fellow lists are posted.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

BIRAC opens this fellowship by national call, not on an annual cycle, and the gap between calls has been long enough that the two most recent ones are the only reliable guide to what the next will ask for.

The third call's closing date was an extended one, announced by BIRAC as a deadline pushed to 15th December, 2025 05:30 PM. The myScheme record carries no open or close date for the scheme, and the Call for Proposals block on BIRAC's E-YUVA page currently reads NO ACTIVE CALLS. That block is the thing to watch: a further call, if BIRAC issues one, appears there first.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The test here is about the team and its host institution, not about a student's marks or stream. Undergraduates from any domain qualify, teams that mix disciplines are encouraged, and one team may draw its members from the same college or from several. A mentor or guide has to back the team.

Team size is the one place the official texts do not read identically. The scheme document and the third call's eligibility line both describe a team of up to 5 undergraduate students and stop there, while the second call and the myScheme record add a floor, at a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5. A team of three or more satisfies every version.

The call document also adds a routing condition the scheme summary leaves out: the team applies through an E-cell of a college or institute, and where the members come from different colleges, each member's college or institute must itself have an E-Cell, an Institutional Innovation Council or an incubation centre. That single line decides whether a cross-college team can apply at all.

Nationality is defined tightly rather than assumed. The scheme document treats a government-approved proof of nationality such as a valid passport as the standard, counts NRIs as Indian citizens, and allows a student without a passport to submit an Aadhaar card along with a declaration attested by a Class I gazetted officer.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

No separate bar list is published for the undergraduate category. What actually rules a team out sits inside the eligibility clause and the definitions at the end of the scheme document, and it comes down to three things.

OCI and PIO cardholders are not eligible, and the document invokes Article 9 of the Constitution to add that people who voluntarily acquire the citizenship of a foreign state are not deemed citizens for this purpose. A student whose college has no E-Cell, Institutional Innovation Council or incubation centre cannot be carried on a team drawn from more than one institution. And a team whose preferred centre is outside the current call's list has nothing to apply to in that round, which is what the third call's restriction to 12 named centres meant in practice for teams near the other centres.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

The fellowship is set at 12 months and the scheme document attaches no extension clause to it. The contrast inside that same document is deliberate: the Innovation Fellows category for post-graduates and above runs for 18 months with a provision of 6 months' extension for deserving cases, while the undergraduate category carries the flat one-year term with no such provision. BIRAC publishes no continuation or second-year route for an E-YUVA Fellows team.

What you get

Award & benefits

Two separate payments run for the fellowship year, and they are controlled by different people.

Read the second row carefully before planning a budget. A team never handles its own research grant, and the mentor's signature is what moves both the grant and each quarter's stipend, so the mentor relationship is an operating dependency and not a formality.

The non-cash side is what the centres exist to supply. Alongside the pre-incubation space, the centres, their knowledge partners and BIRAC provide continuing technical mentoring, IP and legal support, networking and outreach, training, regulatory advice, business mentoring and help with raising funds. Capacity at each centre is finite: an E-YUVA Centre supports up to 5 teams of up to 5 students each in a year, so the number of places in a given call is a function of how many centres it opens for.

• BIRAC’s E-YUVA Fellows will receive a quarterly stipend and annual research grant as mentioned below:
• Quarterly Stipend: INR 7,500/- per quarter per student of the team
• Annual research grant: INR 2,50,000/- per team
• EYCs, EYC knowledge partners, and BIRAC provide continuous mentoring support to fellows, including but not limited to Technical Mentoring, IP Support, Legal Support, Networking and Outreach, Training, Regulatory Advice, Business Mentoring, and Fundraising.
• Note 01: Stipend is released quarterly to the student’s account, subject to the Mentor’s approval.
• Note 02: The annual research grant is released in two installments (1st installment: 75%; 2nd installment: 25%) to the Institute’s account and is managed by the mentor/guide.

What to prepare

Documents required

The online form collects the usual identity and qualification papers. Two attachments sit outside that list, and both are worth preparing before the form is opened. The first is the mentor's paperwork: BIRAC publishes a prescribed format of authorisation letter and undertaking by the mentor on the scheme page, and using that format avoids a rejected attachment. The second is proof of nationality, where the scheme document names the acceptable substitutes for a passport rather than leaving it to the applicant.

BIRAC publishes no exhaustive checklist for this category anywhere outside the application form itself. Whatever the form asks for, plus whatever the call document that is live at the time adds, is the whole requirement.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are made online through the BIRAC website, and for this category one team member registers on behalf of everyone. BIRAC's step-by-step guide to apply for the E-YUVA fellowship screenshots every screen, and the route through them is short:

1. Open the BIRAC home page and use the Login/Register link at the top.
2. Choose new user registration, then the E-YUVA fellow registration link.
3. Select the individual applicant option and fill in the basic registration details.
4. Return to the home page, log in with the username and password created, and complete the application form.

Inside the form, the applicant names up to 3 E-YUVA Centre preferences, which is the point at which the team chooses who it will work with for the year.

There is no status page to refresh. A submitted application stays inside the BIRAC account the team registered with, and the answer arrives from the centre rather than from head office. BIRAC creates a centre-wise list of applicants and sends it to the E-cells and the respective centre, and communicating the decision to applicants at each step of selection is one of the centre's listed responsibilities in the scheme document. Final outcomes appear as selected-fellow lists published on BIRAC's E-YUVA page.

How winners are picked

Selection process

The centre does the work; BIRAC signs off. After eligibility and suitability screening at the centre, eligible applications go through an online technical review by subject experts. Shortlisted teams are then called to present before a Technical Expert Committee with a BIRAC nominee present, at the centre itself. BIRAC's approval is sought on the final selection, after which the centre issues the fellowship award letter to the selected candidates on BIRAC's behalf and the fellows enter into an agreement with it.

That same centre then releases the fellowship and research grant it receives from BIRAC, monitors the targeted milestones and runs periodic review meetings. The centre a team names in its form is therefore the body it deals with for the entire year, which is a good reason to look at the centres' own research strengths before ranking preferences.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Intellectual property generated during the fellowship rests with the innovators, and the scheme document states plainly that neither BIRAC nor the centres claim IP rights in it. The clause runs to a single sentence and carries no exception, so a team that files a patent out of the work owns it.

The rest of the conditions are practical. Selected fellows sign an agreement with their centre. The stipend is released only with the mentor's approval, and the research grant sits in the institute's account under the mentor or guide. The three-to-four-week presence at the centre or its knowledge partner is mandatory for every fellow, not an option. And the proposal itself has to clear a substantive bar: original work, applying interdisciplinary knowledge, aimed at developing a biotech product or technology with societal or commercial potential.

Get help

Contact

Anything to do with an application or an award goes to the E-YUVA Centre, not to BIRAC's Delhi office. BIRAC publishes a chief coordinator's name, institutional address, email and phone number for every centre in its E-YUVA Centres contact list, which runs from Atmiya University in Rajkot and Anna University in Chennai to the University of Kashmir and SKUAST-Kashmir in Srinagar.

For scheme-level questions, BIRAC's office is at 5th Floor, NSIC Business Park, NSIC Bhawan, Okhla Industrial Estate, New Delhi 110020, reachable at birac.dbt@nic.in and on +91-11-49968888.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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