Ten government schemes, and how to tell which one is for you
Four questions, asked in this order, will take ten central schemes down to the one or two that are worth a week of your time.
Summary
- Start by asking whether a scheme puts money in your account at all. Several of the best known ones give you training, a desk or a tax break instead.
- Then filter on stage, because the ceilings move by an order of magnitude: PRISM Phase-I starts at INR 2 lakh, CGSS guarantees up to INR 20 crore.
- Check last whether anything is open today. A scheme can be live on paper for years with no call running, and one of the ten is closed outright.
A founder asked us last month which government schemes she should apply to. She had a list of about thirty, copied from three different blogs. Most of the entries were real. Almost none of them were relevant to her, and four had not accepted an application in over a year.
That is the normal state of this subject. The lists are easy to find and tell you almost nothing, because they are written to be complete rather than to be used. What follows is the opposite: four questions that rule things out fast, applied to the ten central scheme families we track in the grants and schemes register.
Is it actually money?
This is the first filter and it removes more than you would expect. A government programme is worth your application time if it puts cash into the company, or takes a financing cost off you. Everything else is a different kind of thing, and useful, but not funding.
In scope: a grant you do not repay, , a loan, or a guarantee that unlocks a loan. Also in scope: an interest subsidy, a capital subsidy on what you build, and a reimbursement of money you have already spent.
Out of scope: incubation, accelerators, training, mentorship, a tax holiday, help selling to the government, and market access programmes. Some of the most recognisable names in Indian startup policy sit in this second group. They can be worth doing. They are not a source of capital, and a plan that counts them as one has a hole in it.
A government programme is worth your application time if it puts cash into the company, or takes a financing cost off you.
One warning about applying this test yourself. The line is drawn from the scheme's actual guidelines, not from the name or the brochure. GENESIS was filed as an incubation programme in our own research backlog until September 2026. Reading the guidelines properly showed that its investment vertical puts equity straight onto the startup's , so it moved. Names mislead; documents do not.
What stage are you at?
Stage decides the ceiling, and the ceilings are not close to each other. These are the headline figures from the register, each one the maximum rather than the typical award.
Ceilings by stage, from the ten central families in the register
| If you are here | The schemes built for it | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| An idea and a drawing | PRISM Phase-I (Category I) | INR 2 lakh, up to 90% of project cost |
| Building a prototype | PRISM Phase-I (Category ii), nidhi-prayas 2.0 | INR 20 lakh; INR 20 lakh, or INR 40 lakh through an Advance PRAYAS Centre |
| A prototype that works, moving to a product | PRISM Phase-II | INR 50 lakh, up to 50% of project cost |
| A market-ready product and a raise already banked | GENESIS Matching Investment | INR 50 lakh of equity, matching your private round 1:1 |
| Agritech, past prototype | SIDBI Seed Fund at a-IDEA | INR 1 crore of seed equity |
| Defence, and you have won an iDEX challenge | SIDBI iDEX Seed Fund at SINE | INR 10 lakh to INR 1.5 crore, in milestone tranches |
| Buying plant and machinery | Smile, smile Equipment Finance | Around INR 1 crore as a term loan, over up to 60 months |
| Sc, st or women-promoted, starting a new unit | Stand-Up India | INR 10 lakh to INR 1 crore, up to 85% of project cost |
| Raising debt with nothing to pledge | CGSS | A guarantee on up to INR 20 crore of borrowing |
| Designing semiconductors | Design Linked Incentive | 50% of design spend, capped at INR 15 crore |
Two things this table will not do for you. It will not tell you what you are likely to get, because the published number is a ceiling and awards cluster well below it. And it will not tell you whether you qualify, because every one of these has a sector, entity and age test underneath it.
What it does do is stop you writing a PRISM Phase-I application when you need a crore. Half the wasted applications we see are a stage mismatch, visible in ten seconds from a table like this one.
Do you need DPIIT recognition first?
Several of these gate on it. GENESIS requires it. So does CGSS. The Design Linked Incentive's product track is open to DPIIT-recognised startups and Udyam-registered MSMEs and not to anyone else.
Recognition itself is free, it is not a scheme, and it is not money. It is a certificate that makes you eligible to ask. It is worth holding before you start an application season rather than during one, because the certificate has to exist on the day you apply. We have written separately about what DPIIT recognition actually gets you, including the parts of it that are commonly oversold.
If you are not a private limited company, an LLP, a registered partnership firm or a co-operative society, recognition is not available to you. Sole proprietorships and HUFs are excluded. That single line disqualifies a meaningful share of the businesses that ask us about government funding.
Is anything actually open right now?
This is the question the published lists never answer, and it is the one that decides whether your week is wasted.
A scheme has two different states, and they are easy to confuse. The first is whether it exists: is it notified, funded, and still a live policy. The second is whether a call is currently accepting applications. A scheme can sit in the first state for years while the second is shut.
- Startup India Seed Fund Scheme is closed. It is the best known name on most lists, it ran a grant of up to INR 20 lakh alongside up to INR 50 lakh of convertible debentures, and it is not taking applications. Read it as history.
- GENESIS runs in cohorts, not continuously. The Investment 2.0 call opened on 29 August 2026 and closes on 24 September 2026. Between calls the scheme is perfectly alive and there is nothing to apply to.
- PRISM, PRAYAS and the SIDBI seed programmes run through host institutions. The scheme is central; the call is the centre's. Whether you can apply this month is a question about your nearest participating centre, not about the scheme.
- CGSS and Stand-Up India work through lenders. There is no application season. You apply to a bank, and the scheme is what the bank applies to your file.
Our register now records an application window for each scheme, with the dates it opened and closes. That field is new and is not yet filled in for every family. Where it is blank, the honest reading is that nobody has checked recently, not that the scheme is open.
What does the money cost you?
Every one of these has a price that is not the interest rate. It is worth knowing before you apply, because it is very hard to renegotiate afterwards.
- A grant costs you reporting. certificates, usually certified by a chartered accountant, on a schedule set by the sanctioning body. Miss them and the next tranche stops.
- Equity costs you a shareholder you did not choose. Under GENESIS the implementing agency holds the shares as nominee and ownership sits with MeitY Startup Hub. That is a government entity on your cap table, with reporting attached, through your next round and probably the one after.
- A loan costs you the promoter contribution. Stand-Up India funds up to 85% of the project, so you are finding the other 15%, of which at least 10% has to be yours. SMILE expects a contribution too.
- A guarantee costs you a fee. CGSS charges an annual guarantee fee on the covered amount. It is cheaper than the collateral you do not have, which is the point, but it is not free.
- A reimbursement costs you the float. You spend first and claim after. For a scheme like the Design Linked Incentive, that gap can run into crores and months.
The pattern is the same one we see in commercial fundraising. The headline number is the easy part of the decision, and the terms underneath it are what you live with. A grant at 40% of what you asked for, with quarterly certification you are not staffed to produce, is worse than no grant.
So what should you do this week?
Rule out first. Take the money test to your list and delete everything that is training, incubation or a tax benefit. Then delete every scheme built for a stage you are not at. Most founders are down to two or three names by this point, from a starting list of thirty.
Then check, for each survivor, whether a call is open and whether you hold the credentials it gates on. If you do not have and two of your three need it, that is your week's work, not the applications.
The full register carries each scheme's eligibility, benefits and process steps, with the source behind every claim. If the reading takes you somewhere you want help with, our grants and schemes work starts with exactly this filtering, and it is CS Manavi Arora's desk.
Frequently asked questions
Can a startup apply to more than one government scheme at once?
Usually yes, and several schemes explicitly exclude people who have taken a specific other one. GENESIS bars prior TIDE 2.0 Scale-up and SAMRIDH beneficiaries. PRAYAS asks you to declare you have not had PRAYAS or NIDHI-EIR support for the same idea. The tests are scheme by scheme and idea by idea, so read the exclusions before you assume a clash.
Do government grants dilute you?
A grant does not. Equity schemes do, and the register is explicit about which is which. GENESIS is equity. The SIDBI seed programmes at SINE and a-IDEA are equity or equity-like. PRISM and PRAYAS are grants you do not repay and that take no shares.
Is DPIIT recognition enough to get funding?
No. It is a gate, not a qualification. It makes you eligible to apply to schemes that require it, and every one of those has its own separate test on top. Founders regularly read recognition as an award. It is a registration.
What is the fastest government money to get?
Usually a guarantee-backed bank loan, because it runs on the lender's timetable rather than a scheme call's. CGSS and Stand-Up India both work this way. Grant schemes run in cohorts and can take months from call to first tranche.
General guidance, current as at September 2026. Scheme terms, ceilings and windows change, and a call that is open today may be shut next month. Check the register or the scheme's own portal before you act on anything here.
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About the author
Lead - Company Secretarial, Compliance & Fundraise Advisory
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