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

Overview

About SSSCSTSSSU

Samriddhi funds a campus, not a queue. The All India Council for Technical Education releases a limited one-time assistance of Rs 20 lakh to one approved institute or university department, and exactly nine already-registered SC/ST student startups on that campus then take Rs 2 lakh each as non-refundable seed money, under the scheme guidelines. The name on the application is the institute's, never a student's, so nine slots filled by a committee your college constitutes is the whole design - which is why searching for a Samriddhi form to fill in yourself leads nowhere.

Samriddhi exists to move SC/ST final-year students from looking for a job to owning a registered business, and AICTE is blunt about why. Poor job availability in the market, the guidelines say, makes it necessary to give SC/ST students a route into their own enterprise. The sanction then runs for two years, with the non-recurring share released in full at the time of the award (scheme guidelines).

It is a Central Sector scheme under the Ministry of Education, and it was not born as a standalone idea. AICTE's Executive Committee approved the Samriddhi guidelines alongside those of Prerana at its 104th meeting in January 2017, both designed for SC/ST students to meet the requirement of the Tribal Sub Plan and the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan, with the RIITD Bureau made responsible for acting on it (104th EC minutes). That parentage matters when you read the scheme: it is a sub-plan compliance instrument aimed at institutions, wearing the vocabulary of a startup grant.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Samriddhi never had a calendar of its own. It rode the annual AQIS application cycle, which is why its deadline appears in AICTE notices bundled with other schemes: the last date to apply for Prerana, Samriddhi, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan and the Travel Grant under AQIS 2017-18 was extended till 05-12-2017 (AICTE announcement).

That is also the most recent dated call for Samriddhi traceable on AICTE's own site, and the current position deserves saying plainly. AICTE's Students Development schemes page today lists Sarswati, YASHASVI, SWANATH, PRAGATI, SAKSHAM, AURA, the PG Scholarship and others, and Samriddhi is not among them (AICTE Students Development schemes). The Samriddhi entry and its documents survive on an older AICTE schemes page that is still served (older AICTE schemes page). AICTE has issued no closure notice for Samriddhi and no fresh call, so the honest reading is a scheme lying dormant rather than one formally withdrawn. Before a coordinator spends weeks assembling a proposal, get that position confirmed with the council in writing.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two separate gates sit between an SC/ST student and this money, and the harder one has nothing to do with the student. The institute has to be AICTE-approved, must have been in existence for at least ten years, must run a good incubation centre whose activities have been running for at least 5 years, and must have carried a minimum of 50 SC/ST students on an average on roll during the last 3 years while complying with Tribal Sub Plan and Scheduled Caste Sub Plan guidelines (scheme guidelines). A young private college with a new incubation cell fails on arithmetic alone, whatever its SC/ST enrolment looks like.

The student test is short by comparison. You have to be in the final year of a degree or diploma course, and you have to already hold a company or start-up registered in your own name. Notice what the guidelines do not ask for: no family income ceiling, no percentage bar, no state domicile condition, no caste-certificate slab. Merit and means play no part here, because the money is scored against the institute's proposal, not against you.

The AQIS portal adds a hard check of its own. If any course of the institute is not AICTE approved, the application cannot be created at all, and the faculty member attached as Principal Investigator has to be Full Time and Regular or the form throws an error (AQIS user manual).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

One disqualification is written into the guidelines and it is the one that catches selected students late: startup beneficiaries drawing support from another scheme of AICTE or the Government of India are not entitled to Samriddhi (scheme guidelines). A student already holding an AICTE fellowship or a central startup grant for the same venture cannot stack this on top, so the institute's committee has to ask the question before it allocates a slot rather than after.

The seed money is also bounded by where the student studied. The guidelines describe it as going to passed out or present students starting their own enterprise after completing formal education from the same institute, which rules out an outside founder being adopted into a college's list of nine.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

One Samriddhi sanction is written to cover both years at once, so the disbursement clause, not a renewal clause, is where the question gets answered. The non-recurring share lands at the time of the award, and Rs 1 lakh follows as recurring funding in each of two consecutive years (scheme guidelines). The second-year tranche is a continuation of the same award, not a renewal an institute reapplies for.

For the student the question does not arise at all. The seed money is a single non-refundable transfer, so there is no second-year form, no continuation certificate and no academic condition to satisfy for a repeat instalment.

What you get

Award & benefits

The Rs 20 lakh headline is the institute's ceiling, not any one founder's cheque. Here is how the guidelines split it.

Read the funding clause closely and the recurring grant is carved out of the ceiling rather than added to it: the wording is total funding of Rs.20 Lakh, of which Rs. 1 lakh per year shall be recurring grant. Nine seed grants of Rs 2 lakh, plus the Rs 2 lakh the institute keeps for running the selection, already account for that whole ceiling (scheme guidelines). Which of those two heads the recurring instalments are drawn from is not written anywhere in the guidelines, and a coordinator budgeting the award should settle that with the council rather than assume. These are the figures in the guidelines document AICTE still serves, the version its Executive Committee approved; no revised slab has been published since.

• Total funding provided is ₹20,00,000/-.
• Limited one-time financial assistance of ₹20,00,000/- is provided to the Institute.
• Seed money of ₹2,00,000/- per startup will be given, and this amount is non-refundable.
• Funding is allocated for nine startups of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe students.
• ₹2,00,000/- will be given to the institute specifically for meeting the expenditure associated with the selection procedure.
• ₹1,00,000/- per year shall constitute a recurring grant portion of the total funding.
• The total duration of the Scheme shall be for a period of 2 years.
• 100% of non-recurring funds are released at the time of the award of the scheme.
• ₹1,00,000/- each is released as recurring funding for two consecutive years.
• The seed money is provided to passed out or present students for starting their own enterprise after completion of the formal education from the same institute.
• The Institute must set up a committee to select nine already registered startups of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe students.
• It is essential that the center has dedicated faculty serving as the Principal Coordinator and dedicated support staff to ensure smooth functioning and effective meeting of its objectives.
• The Institute must devise a feedback mechanism to assess the importance of the program.
• Feedback shall be obtained after each program from each of the beneficiaries.
• If deemed necessary based on feedback, the Institute can update its curriculum for these programs.
• Exclusions from Benefit
• Startup beneficiaries who are already receiving benefits from other schemes of the All India Council for Technical Education or the Government of India will not be entitled to this scheme.

What to prepare

Documents required

The paperwork splits into three stacks, and only the third one is about the founders. The first proves the institution: its PAN with the issuing authority, state and issue date, the reference of the Extension of Approval letter for the current year, the percentage grant it receives from government, and the institute email (AQIS user manual).

The second is the money plumbing and the coordinator. Bank name, branch, address, account holder, account type, account number, IFSC, MICR code and bank code all go in, with the account number and IFSC masked as you type so they cannot be copied back out, and the IFSC checked at 11 digits. The Principal Investigator's PAN is validated at 10 digits and the Aadhaar number at 12 (AQIS user manual).

The third stack is the one a shortlisted founder supplies. Under Budget Estimates Non-Recurring Samriddhi the institute enters, for each student, the name, present qualification with branch, phone number, email, specification of the project and estimated cost in rupees, and every one of those fields is mandatory. Have the project description and a costed estimate ready in writing before your coordinator opens the form, because a blank there stalls the whole proposal, not just your row.

Step by step

How to apply

Nothing about Samriddhi can be started until the institute's bank block is confirmed, and that catches coordinators out. On the AQIS Application screen the institute's own details arrive pre-filled and locked, but the bank fields have to be entered, then saved, then confirmed through a second explicit step, because the New button that creates an application stays disabled until that confirmation happens (AQIS user manual). Editing the bank details afterwards disables it again.

Clicking New then mints a unique AQIS Application ID, and SAMRIDDHI-Programme Centre for SC/ST Students is chosen from the scheme dropdown on the record that opens. The Principal Investigator is attached through the Faculty Id picker, which pulls the faculty record already on the portal. Six tabs then apply to Samriddhi and all six have to be filled: AQIS Application Details, Budget Estimates Non-Recurring Samriddhi, Academic Credentials of Coordinator, Justification of Project, Credentials of Institute, and Budget Recurring. Validate Application is the last click, and a validation completion message is what confirms the proposal is through.

A shortlisted founder has no way to watch this file, and that is worth knowing early. AICTE documents Samriddhi only from the institute's side: the manual opens on a login with credentials AICTE issued to the institute, and the Status field it describes sits on the application record beside the AQIS Application ID, the duration and the creation date, inside that portal session. No student-side login and no lookup by application number appear anywhere in it, and the one channel it shows for AICTE writing back is a notification icon on the same institute screen (AQIS user manual). Ask the Principal Coordinator what that field reads, and ask specifically whether Validate Application has been run, because a filled form that was never validated has not gone anywhere.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Two committees decide, in sequence, and neither of them interviews you. At AICTE the proposal goes to an Expert Committee of three experts not below the rank of Associate Professor, at least one of whom must be an entrepreneur (scheme guidelines). At the institute, a committee constituted for the purpose selects the nine already-registered SC/ST student startups that will receive the seed money.

What the guidelines leave unsaid, the application form reveals. Scoring is partly mechanical: against every Parameter or Criteria in the coordinator and institution tabs, the portal auto-populates Marks Awarded by the System alongside the maximum and the Marks Awarded by the Experts, while the justification tab carries only the maximum and the experts' marks, with no system score at all. The coordinator is scored on PG and PhD qualifications, patents registered, total experience including teaching, industrial and research work, publications in the last 3 years and PhD students guided; the institution is scored on courses accredited, research projects and consultancy projects completed in the last 3 years, and whether it was selected under TEQIP-I or TEQIP-II (AQIS user manual). A well-published coordinator at an accredited institute scores this form better than a thin proposal from a stronger student cohort, which is worth knowing before you decide the competition is between founders.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The conditions attach to the institute, and they outlast the disbursement. The centre running the programme must have dedicated faculty as Principal coordinator and support staff, and the institute has to devise a feedback mechanism that collects feedback after each programme from each beneficiary, updating the curriculum of these programmes if the feedback calls for it (scheme guidelines).

For a founder, the binding condition is the one on the money itself. The Rs 2 lakh is described as non refundable seed money, which means a venture that folds does not create a recovery claim against the student, but it also means the institute's committee is choosing carefully, because nothing comes back into the pool if a startup stops trading.

Get help

Contact

Responsibility for Samriddhi was assigned to AICTE's RIITD Bureau when the Executive Committee cleared the guidelines, and that is the desk a query about the scheme belongs to rather than a scheme-specific helpline, which Samriddhi has never had (104th EC minutes). The council's head office is at Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070, and the board number it publishes is 011-2958 1050 - 1000 (AICTE). A student chasing a specific proposal will get further with the Principal Coordinator named on it, who is the only person with sight of the file.

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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