E-YUVA Scheme: BIRAC’s Innovation Fellows (for post graduates and above)(E-YUVAS:BIRACIF(FPGA))

Overview

About E-YUVAS:BIRACIF(FPGA)

BIRAC's Innovation Fellows is the E-YUVA scheme's track for people who have already finished a Masters or a PhD and want to turn a research idea into a biotech product, and then a company. The fellow applies alone, moves to an E-YUVA Centre and works there full time, drawing a monthly fellowship and a yearly research grant while the centre supplies lab space and mentoring.

The practical catch is timing. The track opens only through national calls, and the most recent call, in October 2025, was for undergraduate teams alone.

The scheme is run by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) under the Department of Biotechnology. Its scheme document is blunt about purpose: Innovation Fellows are expected to start biotech startups, so only proposals with the potential to commercialize a product or technology are considered E-YUVA scheme document, Version 1.1, January 2022.

The network behind it has grown. BIRAC's February 2024 call offered incubation in any of the existing 10 E-YUVA Centres BIRAC call notice, February 2024, and its October 2025 notice counted 19 BIRAC 3rd call notice, October 2025.

The track suits a Masters or PhD holder with a defined product problem who can relocate to a host university and is ready to treat the fellowship as a pre-startup job. It is a poor fit for anyone looking for a doctoral stipend.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No call has taken Innovation Fellow applications since the February 2024 notice closed on 15 March 2024. The October 2025 call that followed it was for undergraduate teams only, and BIRAC's Call for Proposal page, where every E-YUVA notice is posted under the scheme's name, lists no Innovation Fellow call after that BIRAC Call for Proposal. The Call for Proposals block on the E-YUVA page read "NO ACTIVE CALLS" in September 2026 BIRAC E-YUVA page.

The four fellowship calls so far opened in February 2022, December 2022, February 2024 and October 2025, and only the first three took Innovation Fellow applications:

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

BIRAC's own call notices have read the Post Graduate Fellow line more widely than the myScheme summary does. The 2022 and 2024 notices accepted applicants who had completed their "Masters/B.Tech/ B.Pharma/B.E in any field of science" under the Post Graduate Fellow heading, which put engineering and pharmacy graduates without a Masters inside the track in those rounds BIRAC call notice, February 2022, BIRAC call notice, February 2024. The scheme document itself words the degree test as a Masters or PhD "in any discipline" E-YUVA scheme document. The notice for the round you apply in is the document that fixes the degree list for that round.

For women, the exemption covers only the time-since-degree limit. The full-time requirement and the PhD restrictions apply to every applicant, whatever their gender E-YUVA scheme document.

The scheme document sets no family-income limit and no age limit. What it tests is nationality, the degree, the time since the degree, and whether the proposal can become a product; on nationality, its definition of an Indian citizen expressly includes NRIs E-YUVA scheme document.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

myScheme publishes no exclusion list for this track, but the scheme document shuts out several groups E-YUVA scheme document:

• OCI and PIO cardholders, and anyone who has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of another country.
• Anyone enrolled in a PhD at the time of applying; a selected fellow also may not enrol in one during the tenure.
• Male applicants who apply more than three years after their Masters, or more than two years after their PhD.
• Proposals that stop at basic research, since only translational work aimed at a product or technology for an unmet need is supported.
• Undergraduates, who belong to the separate E-YUVA Fellows category and apply as teams.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

There is no annual renewal to file. The award is a single tenure of 18 months, and the scheme document allows one further 6 months "only for deserving cases" E-YUVA scheme document.

The document neither defines "deserving" nor names who grants the extension. The record a fellow builds during the tenure is kept by the host centre, whose listed duties include tracking each fellow against targeted milestones, holding periodic review meetings and reporting progress to BIRAC E-YUVA scheme document.

What you get

Award & benefits

The fellowship and the research grant are fixed by level of degree, not by field or centre.

One gap in those figures: the research grant is stated per year while the tenure is 18 months, and the scheme document does not say how the grant is sized for the months after the first year.

An Innovation Fellow's working base is the centre's BIRAC-supported pre-incubation space, which the scheme document sizes at 3,000 sq. ft. or more. The mentoring arrangement is written for this category in particular: BIRAC formally associates each centre with a BioNEST-supported bio-incubator as its knowledge partner "for the mentoring of Innovation Fellows", and that partner engages with the fellows throughout the award period E-YUVA scheme document. Research needs beyond the centre's own equipment are met through that bio-incubator connection.

• BIRAC’s Innovation Fellows will receive fellowship grants and annual research grants as mentioned below:
• Fellowship grant: INR 30,000/- per month for Post-graduate fellow
• INR 50,000/- per month for Post-doctoral fellow
• Annual research grant: INR 3,00,000/- per year for Post-graduate fellow
• INR 5,00,000/- per year for Post-doctoral fellow
• Note: EYCs 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.

What to prepare

Documents required

myScheme's list stops at identity proof, degree certificates and "other relevant documents". The scheme document adds one requirement that catches applicants without a passport: proof of Indian nationality is a valid passport, or, failing that, an Aadhaar card with a declaration attested by a Class I gazetted officer E-YUVA scheme document.

Keep the document showing when your degree was completed within reach, because the time-since-degree limit is counted from that date. The proposal carries most of the weight: the scheme document supports translational work only, and its definition of translational research points to BIRAC's Technology Readiness Level scale of 1 to 9 as the way to quantify it E-YUVA scheme document.

The authorisation letter and mentor undertaking linked from BIRAC's E-YUVA page are worded for undergraduate teams. The letter certifies currently enrolled students and the undertaking binds a faculty mentor to a team, so neither fits an individual Innovation Fellow's file BIRAC authorisation letter and mentor undertaking format.

Step by step

How to apply

Applications open only when BIRAC publishes a national call; between calls there is nothing to submit. When one is open, the application is made on BIRAC's website and an Innovation Fellow creates the user account in their own name, since the notices allow one member to register on behalf of others only for E-YUVA Fellow teams BIRAC call notice, February 2024. BIRAC's step-by-step guide covers the route in seven steps, from the Login/Register link on the home page through new-user registration and an "Applying as an Individual" screen to the log-in that opens the form BIRAC step-by-step guide for E-YUVA application.

The form asks you to name up to three E-YUVA Centres as your choices E-YUVA scheme document. For this track that is also a choice of workplace, because the fellowship is worked full time at the centre. Choose with the notice open beside you, because a round can cover only some centres: the December 2022 vacancy round advertised Innovation Fellow seats at seven named centres only BIRAC vacancy call notice.

How to Track Your Application

BIRAC offers no online status page for this fellowship. Applications are sorted into centre-wise lists and sent to the centres, and the scheme document makes each centre responsible for conveying the decision at every selection step and for issuing the award letter on BIRAC's behalf E-YUVA scheme document. The centres are also where BIRAC's scheme page sends any query about the application process BIRAC E-YUVA scheme page.

Final results are posted as PDF lists on BIRAC's E-YUVA page, where the list from the December 2022 vacancy round is labelled "2nd Call" BIRAC E-YUVA page. Each Innovation Fellow list identifies a selected applicant by a proposal reference number beginning BT/IF, alongside the name, home institute and E-YUVA Centre; the first national call's list runs to 19 fellows BIRAC first call results, Innovation Fellows.

After selection, a late monthly payment is also a question for the centre, which pays out the fellowship and research grant BIRAC releases to it. The scheme document ties no mentor's approval to an Innovation Fellow's monthly grant, a condition it does place on the undergraduate stipend E-YUVA scheme document.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Selection runs in two layers, a national call and a centre-level review, as the scheme document lays it out E-YUVA scheme document:

1. BIRAC advertises the call nationally and collects applications online, each naming up to three preferred centres.
2. Each centre receives its own applicant list and screens it for eligibility and suitability for the scheme.
3. Subject experts carry out an online technical review of the eligible proposals.
4. Shortlisted applicants present before a Technical Expert Committee that includes a BIRAC nominee; the interview may be face to face, over Skype or by telephone.
5. The centre seeks BIRAC's approval of its final selection, and each selected fellow signs an agreement with the centre.

No scoring grid is published. The stated filter is the nature of the proposal, and a hard cap shapes the odds at any single centre: each centre can have only three Innovation Fellows at a time E-YUVA scheme document.

Advertised seats are not always filled. In the December 2022 vacancy round BIRAC advertised 13 Innovation Fellow seats across seven centres BIRAC vacancy call notice, and the results list for that round names 10 selected fellows BIRAC vacancy round results, Innovation Fellows.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Beyond the full-time rule, three conditions shape a fellow's working life E-YUVA scheme document:

• The agreement a selected fellow signs is with the E-YUVA Centre, not with BIRAC directly.
• The work is measured against two expected outputs, conversion from an individual into a company and the creation of intellectual property, with the centre monitoring targeted milestones.
• That second output belongs to the fellow. Because the scheme document leaves fellowship IP with the innovators, a company formed at the end of the tenure does not start with BIRAC or the host centre holding a claim on its technology.

BIRAC's E-YUVA pages do not publish the text of the centre agreement.

Get help

Contact

For anything about an application, BIRAC's scheme page points applicants to the E-YUVA Centres rather than its head office BIRAC E-YUVA scheme page. Since an Innovation Fellow would work full time at the centre, its chief coordinator is the practical first contact. BIRAC's July 2026 contact sheet gives each centre's coordinator with a direct email and phone number, Kannur University in Kerala, Shoolini University in Solan and CAU's College of Horticulture and Forestry in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh among them E-YUVA Centre contact details, July 2026.

Scheme-level questions can go to BIRAC in New Delhi by email at birac.dbt@nic.in or by phone on +91-11-49968888; the council sits on the 5th Floor of NSIC Business Park, NSIC Bhawan, Okhla Industrial Estate, New Delhi 110020 BIRAC Contact Us.

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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