Indian firms in sectors including agriculture and allied activities, automotive and pharma have already begun posting vacancies for interns as part of the ambitious PM Internship Scheme that was launched on a pilot mode on October 3. Firms such as pharma major Alembic, Mahindra and Mahindra as well as Max Life Insurance which had by Thursday morning already put out 1,077 vacancies for interns. “As many as 111 companies have already come on board for the scheme and a virtual exercise for familiarisation and training is being carried out by the ministry of corporate affairs for them,” said a source close to the development, adding that many more companies are expected to join over the next few days. “Based on the interactions with companies, most of the internship will be in production and maintenance related aspects of work,” said a senior government official. In the early hours of the portal being opened, internship opportunities had been posted for seven districts in states including Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana and Gujarat. The portal, will match candidates to internships using AI and data sieving technologies and the aim would be to ensure that they get internships in firms in their districts or a neighbouring district. “No candidate will have to leave their state for the internship. The company or any entity in its forward or backward value chain will provide an internship in a nearby Pin Code. The portal is being managed by a government agency BISAG. Based on the learnings from the pilot project that aims to provide internship opportunities to 1.25 lakh youth, the ministry of corporate affairs will finalise the full scheme and take it to the Cabinet. “This should be done later this year,” the source said. The online portal, which has been opened for companies for now, will be opened to candidates on October 12, which is Vijaya Dashmi and they will have time until October 25 to register. However, several queries have already started coming in from candidates on the toll free multilingual call centre for the scheme. The profile of candidates who had called reveal that 44% of those who have called are graduates and 13% are post graduates while 11% are 12th passed. Another 3% of those have called are 10th passed and 1% of those who called were 8th passed. Another 20% were of the miscellaneous category. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget on July 23 had announced the internship scheme at top 500 companies as part of the PM’s package on employment and skilling. The comprehensive scheme would provide internship opportunities in 500 top companies to 1 crore youth in five years, she had said, adding that this would enable them to gain exposure for 12 months to real-life business environment, varied professions and employment opportunities.