Technology Development And Utilization Programme For Women(TDUPW)

Overview

About TDUPW

A woman cannot apply for the Technology Development and Utilization Programme for Women in her own name. DSIR sanctions the grant to an organisation, and the women in the programme's title are the ones that organisation trains or equips, not the ones whose signatures reach Technology Bhavan.

TDUPW pays for a project, not a person. A university department, a registered society or a trust writes the proposal, appoints a Project Investigator from its own staff, and takes responsibility for delivering technology to women in a defined area. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research releases the money to that institution and reviews it against the institution's milestones.

The myScheme record is where the confusion starts. Its beneficiary field reads Individual, while its own eligibility text carries the sub-heading For Institutions and then lists societies, trusts and grant-receiving academic bodies. A student or an early-career researcher reading only the tag will assume there is a fellowship here. There is not one.

TDUPW is not a standalone scheme either. DSIR runs it as a component of Access to Knowledge for Technology Development and Dissemination, one of the four sub-schemes of the department's central sector Industrial Research and Development programme, alongside PRISM, PACE and BIRD, as DSIR sets out in its monthly report for April 2026. That is why the proposal is addressed to the Head of A2K+ rather than to a TDUPW desk, and why department documents write the name as TDUPW/A2K+.

DSIR is still counting beneficiaries. Its report for that month counted around 142 women trained under continuing TDUPW/A2K+ projects, in sericulture, aquaculture, food fortification and processing, ready-to-eat food preparation and packaging, paper recycling, handicraft and handloom, and agri-technology.

Earlier the same year, at the department's 42nd Foundation Day, DSIR exchanged a fresh TDUPW agreement with NIT Raipur to set up a Skill Satellite Centre at Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh, as the Press Information Bureau reported on 4 January 2026. A new agreement in January and a training count in April put TDUPW activity into the department's own record twice inside the same year.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

No notification month, no closing date and no annual calendar exist for TDUPW, because the guidelines make the financial year itself the window. That is why the myScheme record's open and close dates sit blank: DSIR never sets them.

The documents do carry vintages worth naming. DSIR's current programme page still stamps its guidelines and application format link 03/12/2018, and the A2K+ page dates the TDUPW entry the same way. The TDUPW/A2K+ guidelines file the department serves today is a later revision that carries no date of its own; it is identifiable by the officer it names as Head of A2K+, Dr. Sujata Chaklanobis in place of the older file's Shri Ashwani Gupta, and by three passages the older file has no equivalent of: the ICT bar, the General Financial Rules test for a distinct legal entity, and the line making EAT-module compliance mandatory. The list of projects supported that DSIR still hosts was published on 5 June 2009 and has not been refreshed, so it shows what TDUPW funded a decade and a half ago, not what is running now.

For what is running now, the department's monthly reports are the current record: the September 2025 report counted around 361 women trained that month under ongoing TDUPW/A2K+ projects.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The applicant institution has to fall into one of three categories under the current TDUPW/A2K+ guidelines: a body that receives annual recurring grants from central or state government agencies, which the guidelines extend to Indian universities, academic institutions, R&D institutions and any institution holding a distinct legal entity under Rule 228 of the General Financial Rules 2017; a society registered under the Societies Registration Act; or a trust registered under the Indian Trusts Act. It must also already work on developing or spreading technologies for women, with experience in that field.

Two of those categories have quietly gone. The eligibility list reproduced on the myScheme record, and on DSIR's archived erstwhile page, also admits companies incorporated under the Companies Act and professional and industry associations. The guidelines file the department now serves drops both, and DSIR's own current-programmes page lists three categories as well. An industry association reading the aggregator listing and building a proposal on it would be working from a superseded list.

Nothing in the guidelines makes the investigator's own gender a condition. The older Format C carried a Sex and Date of Birth row against both the Project Investigator and the Co-Project Investigator; the current one drops that row and asks only for their names, designations, contact details and detailed CVs. The eligibility test sits on the institution, not on the person who signs as investigator. No minimum degree, no years of experience and no age bar are published for the investigator. What the institution's head must do is forward the proposal in writing, name the Project Investigator, and undertake that the institution will provide the facilities and infrastructure needed to finish the work.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Information and communications technology is barred outright. The current guidelines state that projects in the areas of ICT are not supported under the TDUPW programme, which rules out the software training and digital literacy proposals that women-focused schemes usually attract. The myScheme entry carries an empty exclusions field, so an institution working from the aggregator would not meet that bar until its proposal came back. Land and buildings are outside the grant too, where the erstwhile wording barred basic infrastructure and buildings.

Two undertakings in Format B close off the rest. The investigators certify that the proposal has not gone to any other agency for financial support, and that equipment and facilities already available to them will not be re-purchased out of the project. Format A allows the honest alternative: if the same proposal has gone elsewhere for partial funding, the head of the institution declares the agency and the amount rather than hiding it.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A TDUPW sanction runs to the end date in the institution's own time schedule and stops there. The current guidelines cap total duration at two years, where the erstwhile wording myScheme still reproduces called a shorter duration merely preferable, and neither version publishes an extension procedure. An institution that wants to carry the work further writes a fresh proposal, which goes back to the same committee.

Within a sanctioned project it is the instalment flow that continues, and DSIR conditions each release on the milestones in the time schedule the institution proposed, on progress reports setting out what the project has achieved, and on Utilization Certificates for the money already spent.

What you get

Award & benefits

DSIR publishes no grant ceiling for TDUPW, no slab and no per-beneficiary rate. Assistance can be partial or full financial support plus technical guidance, and the guidelines put the onus on the institution to say in its proposal which of those it is asking for. What is fixed is the list of heads the money may sit under, and the overhead rate written into the budget page of Format C.

Read the equipment row against the erstwhile rules before quoting an aggregator. The erstwhile TDUPW rules, which myScheme still mirrors, restricted assistance to manpower, consumables, travel within the country and miscellaneous expenditure; basic equipment, monitoring costs and institutional overheads appear in the current file.

For a sense of the money DSIR moves through this line, the Ministry of Science and Technology gave the Lok Sabha a five-year table on 23 July 2025. The reply merges DSIR-TDUPW's five financial-year columns into one cell of Rs 8.525 crore covering FY 2020-21 to FY 2024-25, against 77.59 crore for DST's WISE-KIRAN in FY 2024-25 alone. No other scheme in that five-year table shows a smaller total.

• Duration of the Project
• The project should be time-bound, depending upon the nature of the project. Normally a duration of less than 2 years is preferred.
• Quantum of Financial Assistance
• Assistance will be provided for those projects which are relevant to technology development and utilization by the women.
• Assistance can be by way of financial support (partial or full) and technical guidance.
• The financial assistance will be provided only for meeting expenditures on Manpower, Consumables, travel within the country and other miscellaneous expenditures.
• Note 1: The type of assistance required by the institution should be clearly indicated in the proposal.
• Note 2: No support will be provided for basic infrastructure and buildings.
• Method of Release of Financial Assistance
• The assistance will be released in instalments and will be linked to specific milestones achieved as per the time schedule indicated in the proposal.
• The release would also be dependent on the completion of formalities like submission of progress reports and Utilization Certificates.

What to prepare

Documents required

The proposal travels as three numbered formats. Format A is the forwarding letter, signed and stamped by the head of the institution, carrying the project title, the total cost in rupees, the duration in months and the name and designation of the Project Investigator. Format B is the investigators' certificate.

Format C is the substance, and the guidelines fix its shape closely: the organisation's legal status with a 100-word account of its activities, bank details with an ECS form, CVs of the Project Investigator and Co-Project Investigator, objectives, a one-page project summary, a review of status within 600 words that has to name the geographical area and the socio-economic status of the target women, an activity schedule, outcomes and deliverables, sustainability after DSIR support ends, and the contacts of ten experts in the subject field.

Non-government applicants attach more. The registration certificate travels with the Memorandum of Association and rules, or the trust deed, plus annual reports and auditor's reports for the last 3 years, per the guidelines.

One practical change catches repeat applicants. The 2018 version of the guidelines demanded Format C in 05 hard copies; the current file asks for a single copy plus a soft copy by email.

Step by step

How to apply

The guidelines let a proposal reach DSIR on any day of the financial year, so an institution applies when its project is ready rather than when a call opens. The package goes to the Head of A2K+ at DSIR, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi, with the soft copy of Format C emailed to the addresses printed in the guidelines file.

Treat the online mode on the myScheme listing with care. DSIR's own Online Application Submission page carries rows for recognition and renewal of in-house R&D units, recognition of SIROs and registration of public funded research institutions, each of them instructing the applicant to submit a physical application, and no row for TDUPW at all. The electronic half of a TDUPW application is the emailed soft copy, not a portal account with a login.

That shapes how an institution tracks a submitted proposal. The only reference the process generates is the project code DSIR writes into the block at the head of Format C, alongside the date of receipt, the receiving officer, the Technical Advisory Committee number and date, and the decision; the block is marked for official use and is filled in inside the department, so the applicant never sees any of it until an answer arrives. The milestone worth asking about is the TAC meeting, and the route to it is the A2K+ desk named in the guidelines, by telephone or email.

How winners are picked

Selection process

The Technical Advisory Committee of the ministry decides. Under the guidelines the TAC may take the advice of an internal Screening Committee constituted for the purpose, of external experts, or of the ministry that owns the subject matter, which is why proposals in agriculture or fisheries can be routed past reviewers outside DSIR. No marks, weightings or scoring rubric are published.

A cleared proposal then moves to administrative and financial approval, and DSIR issues a sanction letter that fixes the amount under each budget head, the payment schedule and the conditions. The institution accepts the conditions formally, signs the terms and conditions, and the first instalment follows that acceptance letter. DSIR dates the start of the project from the release of that instalment, not from the sanction letter.

This last step is where the archived rules mislead. DSIR's erstwhile TDUPW page, still the text most aggregators copy, required an agreement on judicial stamp paper of Rupees Ten or an MoU. In the current file that stamped agreement becomes a signed set of terms and conditions returned with the acceptance letter.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Every obligation in the current file is written against the institution, not the investigator. Progress reports and Utilization Certificates gate each release, unspent grant-in-aid must be refunded to DSIR, and compliance with the Expenditure, Advance and Transfer module is mandatory, which puts the project's spending on the government's own tracking system.

A Project Review Committee constituted by the department reviews progress periodically, and the executing agency has to extend cooperation and facilities including travel allowance and honorarium to every PRC member other than the DSIR officer. When the project ends the institution files a final report with photographs and supporting documents alongside the closing Utilization Certificate.

Staff changes are handled by the institution, not by DSIR. If the Project Investigator leaves before completion, the guidelines require the institution to propose a suitable successor immediately, obtain DSIR's permission to appoint them, and take full responsibility for finishing the project on the existing terms.

Get help

Contact

Proposals and queries go to Dr. Sujata Chaklanobis, Scientist G and Head A2K+, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Technology Bhawan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi-110016, on 011-26520887, at priya@nic.in, with the guidelines file also naming vandana.kalia@nic.in for the emailed soft copy.

Ignore the officer named on DSIR's archived erstwhile page. That page still routes applicants to a Scientist G in the TPDU group, on another telephone number and another email address; the A2K+ desk above is the one printed on the guidelines the department serves today.

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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References

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