IndiaAI Fellowship: Project Funding for UG PG PhD Students

IndiaAI Fellowship: what it is, and who actually runs it

The IndiaAI Fellowship is the student-funding arm of the IndiaAI Mission, the Government of India's flagship artificial intelligence programme. The Mission is implemented by IndiaAI, an independent business division of Digital India Corporation, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The fellowship sits inside the Mission's FutureSkills pillar, whose job is to widen access to AI education at every level of higher education.

Unlike a conventional scholarship that simply pays a student's fees, this fellowship is project money. It funds students who are already doing AI or machine-learning coursework and research, so that a good final-year project, a master's thesis or a doctoral research plan does not stall for want of funds. It covers three levels — undergraduate (including integrated dual degree), postgraduate, and PhD — but each level works differently, and the PhD route in particular is not a direct individual application in the way the UG and PG routes are.

What each level gets

Undergraduate and integrated dual degree students can receive up to ₹1 lakh for their AI project or research work. Three-year UG students become eligible after their fourth-semester (second-year) results; four-year UG students after their sixth-semester (third-year) results; integrated dual degree students after their eighth-semester (fourth-year) results. In practice this means final-year students working on a substantial AI project.

Postgraduate students in their first, second or third semester can receive up to ₹2 lakh in total support across the programme.

PhD scholars receive the deepest support, and it follows the published IndiaAI PhD guidelines rather than a lump sum: a monthly fellowship of ₹38,750, paid for up to four years or until the PhD is completed, whichever is earlier; accommodation support of 30% of the fellowship amount paid alongside it; a research contingency grant of ₹1,20,000 per year from the second year onwards; institutional overheads of ₹25,000 per year paid to the institute; and one-time support of up to ₹1.5 lakh to present an accepted paper at an international conference, also from the second year. Fifty final-year scholars a year can additionally be selected for funded visits to laboratories abroad. All payments to scholars are made by direct transfer into an Aadhaar-seeded bank account.

Across all levels, there is one extra worth knowing about: scholars whose papers are accepted at international AI conferences with an h5-index above 100 can claim additional one-time support of up to ₹1 lakh towards travel and accommodation.

Who is eligible

The common conditions are that you must be an Indian national, enrolled full-time — part-time students are not eligible at any level — and working on AI or allied subjects. Your discipline does not have to be computer science: students from engineering, sciences, medicine, law, commerce, business and liberal arts can apply if their project is genuinely AI-related.

For UG and PG applicants, the academic bar is coursework-based. You need to have completed at least three full-time AI courses, and to meet the grade threshold the portal prescribes for your level. PG applicants are expected to have a strong undergraduate record and to be performing well in the current programme; a GATE scorecard, if you have one, can be submitted as an optional supporting document.

The PhD route has its own, stricter rules, because the seats belong to institutions, not to individual applicants. IndiaAI offers 100 PhD fellowships a year through the top 50 NIRF-ranked research institutes that have been onboarded onto the scheme. To be picked up by one of those institutes you must be a newly enrolled, full-time PhD scholar in artificial intelligence; you must hold a CGPA/CPI of at least 8.0 in your graduation, or at least 7.5 if you are entering with a master's degree (for five-year integrated dual degree holders, the PG-part CGPA counts); and you must not be receiving any other scholarship or salary at the time of enrolment. That last condition is absolute — candidates who have already taken PhD support from another Government of India or state scheme are disqualified, and transferring in from another scholarship scheme is not permitted.

Current status for 2026–27

Fresh applications for the 2026–27 academic year have opened on the fellowship portal for UG, PG, integrated dual degree and PhD students. Note how this differs from the position earlier in 2026, when the PhD window for that cycle closed on 28 February and only UG/PG nominations were described as continuing. If you looked at this fellowship in the spring and found the PhD door shut, it is worth looking again now — but check the closing date shown on the portal itself when you log in, because the deadline is the one detail that changes most often with this programme.

How to apply

For UG, PG and dual degree students, the process runs through the fellowship portal (fellowship.indiaai.gov.in):

• Register and log in on the portal, and complete your profile.
• Fill in the application for your level, including your AI coursework, grades and a description of the project the money will fund.
• Upload the documents listed below.
• Your project guide verifies the application; it is then forwarded for evaluation.
• IndiaAI approves or rejects the application based on eligibility and seat availability.

For PhD scholars the flow is institutional: your institute first shares its nodal officer's details with IndiaAI and is onboarded; the institute identifies eligible scholars; scholars then fill in the application and upload documents on the portal; and IndiaAI takes the final decision after verification.

Documents applicants are asked for include a signed and stamped endorsement letter from the guide, department head or institute head on official letterhead; original marksheets up to the last completed semester; a recent passport-size photograph; and a cancelled cheque or the front page of a passbook for a bank account in the student's own name. PhD scholars additionally provide details such as their APAAR ID and account information in the prescribed proforma.

Mistakes that cost applicants

The most common one is applying while holding another government fellowship — for PhD scholars this is an automatic disqualification, not a technicality. A second is treating the UG grant as general financial aid: it is tied to an AI project with a named guide, and applications without a credible project and the guide's endorsement do not survive verification. A third is leaving the endorsement letter to the last day; it needs a signature and stamp from your institution, which rarely happens overnight. Finally, keep your bank details consistent — the account must be in the student's name, and for PhD scholars Aadhaar-seeded, because money moves only by direct transfer.

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