NIDHI PRAYAS (Promoting and Accelerating Young and Aspiring Innovators & Startups)

DST initiative providing grant-in-aid support to young innovators and early-stage startups for converting technology-based ideas into prototypes and MVPs. PRAYAS disburses its grant in milestone-linked tranches over an 18-month build window through a national network of PRAYAS Centres and Advance PRAYAS Centres, with the latter supporting deeper-tech hardware builds at up to ₹40 lakh. The program's eligibility bar — company age under 7 years (10 for biotech) and turnover below ₹25 lakh — is designed to keep it targeted at genuinely early, pre-revenue hardware teams rather than already-scaling manufacturers.