In a dusty field in Gorakhpur’s Ramnagar Taal, Mahesh Kumar Nishad wipes the sweat from his brow as his borewell machine strikes water at 320ft. By the end of his second day of work in this field, he will have earned over Rs50,000—nearly 20 times what he was making just months ago.
His transformation began with a chance conversation. A bank manager, for whom Nishad had done boring work, mentioned CM YUVA—the Mukhyamantri Yuva Udyami Vikas Abhiyan (Chief Minister’s Youth Entrepreneur Development Campaign). The scheme promises collateral-free, guarantee-free, interest-free business loans for those even with modest qualifications. Its most vocal champion: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who speaks of it glowingly at every opportunity.
CM YUVA aims to create a cultural shift—turning job seekers to job creators. At 26, with only an intermediate education, Nishad embodies this shift. Like most youth in Uttar Pradesh, he had aimed for a government job, even applying for the armed forces, only to be met with disappointment. He ended up working as a labourer, operating borewell machines for others, often going days without work. The machine owner made money for every foot drilled, while Nishad earned a fixed wage. The future felt uncertain.
Then came CM YUVA. With the bank manager’s help, Nishad received 4.25 lakh. With his savings and borrowed money from relatives, he bought a borewell drilling machine for Rs7.5 lakh.
The impact was immediate. Since June, he has completed seven projects—each taking two days, one for setup and one for drilling. But instead of daily wages, he now earns project fees that dwarf his old income. His confidence about repaying the loan, which starts six months after disbursement, is evident. “It will all be good,” he says.
In Kanpur, around 200km away, 22-year-old Prabhnoor Kaur crafts sugar flowers that look lifelike. Her cakes have been featured in international magazines, but her venture—Sweet Sculpt by Kaurs—began amid family scepticism.
Though she holds a psychology degree, Kaur turned her Covid-era hobby into a business. Her father, who runs an electrical parts shop and disliked loans, eventually handled the paperwork himself when someone in his network vouched for CM YUVA.
After receiving 4.25 lakh, she transformed one floor of her house into a professional cake studio. She bought machinery and raw materials, turning her kitchen experiments into a fledgling business, with working hours from 10am to 7pm—sometimes past midnight to meet urgent orders.
Her specialty is luxury customisation: wedding cakes that resemble architectural masterpieces, sugar flowers that seem natural and freshly picked, structure cakes that blur the line between food and art. Sweet Sculpt now gets four to five orders a week, with 1kg cakes starting at Rs1,200. It has delivered orders from Lucknow, Gonda and Prayagraj.
Kanpur’s market has its unique challenges. Customers want luxury aesthetics without luxury budgets, spending Rs4,000 to Rs5,000 for cakes worth twice as much. Kaur has adapted by teaching women baking and running children’s workshops, with plans to open a coffee house. She is uncertain about loan repayment, but that has not diminished her determination.
In Lucknow, Tuba Siddiqui, 38, represents what happens when CM YUVA meets experienced entrepreneurship. Armed with a biotechnology degree and years of experience making nature-based personal and home care products, she needed capital to restart after a failed partnership forced her to shut her earlier venture.
The fully online application process was “surprisingly smooth”. When she delayed, the bank called to nudge her along. She received the full Rs5 lakh, plus a credit limit for raw materials. Today, her business—Soil Concepts—employs seven people and supplies around 60 organic stores across India. Her customer base of 60,000 includes actor Juhi Chawla, and talks are progressing to stock premium hotels. “We are profitable,” Siddiqui says of her AYUSH-certified, completely organic brand, which she runs with her husband, Faiz.
But she is also realistic: Rs5 lakh is not enough for scaling. When bulk orders require Rs10 lakh for packaging materials, the funding ceiling becomes a growth constraint. Still, she sees CM YUVA as a crucial bridge for viable businesses with experienced operators.
Not every story ends in success. Pawan Kumar Misra, 39, illustrates how implementation gaps can crush innovation. Despite a PhD in zoology, he struggled to find traditional employment, partly because of a locomotor disability. His business plan was online coaching, but the bank was sceptical because his home was on a back road. The bank wanted him to rent space with “better visibility”—a pointless expense for an online model.
He received only Rs2.5 lakh, enough for basic furniture and an air conditioner, but not the technology for digital classes. His dream of reaching underserved students collapsed. Today, he runs a conventional coaching centre. Despite the scheme’s promised six-month moratorium, the bank already deducts EMI of about Rs5,000. A friend who borrowed Rs4.25 lakh for a fast-food joint pays three times that amount, creating cash-flow pressures that make growth difficult.
“No coaching business can become an overnight success, and the margins are low,” says Misra. His case illustrates how arbitrary implementation can turn an opportunity to a burden.
CM YUVA’s approach is radical, says K. Vijayendra Pandian, commissioner and director, directorate of industries and enterprise promotion, who serves as the scheme’s mission director. The government absorbs the entire interest component—an unprecedented provision in India’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.
The target is staggering: one lakh entrepreneurs annually, 10 lakh over a decade. Eligibility is simple: age 21-40, with education up to at least Class 8. Apart from 100 per cent interest-free loans up to Rs5 lakh, the scheme offers a 10 per cent cash bonus on project costs, and further loan possibilities upon success.
CM YUVA also includes ideation support for over 350 business ideas, incubation help with registration and supplier connections, and ongoing mentorship through partnerships with 10 departments, ranging from rural livelihood missions to technical universities. A recently held three-day conclave and expo in Lucknow generated 5,000 leads, of which 200 have already been converted into applications. Such conclaves will be held in all divisions.
Support infrastructure includes 1.5 lakh centres for applications, dedicated personnel in each district, and retired bankers and chartered accountants for executing complex projects.
All this matters deeply in UP, where there is a cultural bias against entrepreneurship. Middle-class families see entrepreneurship as risky, preferring the security of monthly salaries to uncertain profits. But, despite the state’s 23 crore people having traditionally chased jobs, UP ranks fourth in unemployment at 5.45 per cent.
Roli Misra, professor at Lucknow University’s department of economics, says hindrances include low risk-taking capacity, bureaucratic bottlenecks and lack of investment opportunities.
Sarveshwar Shukla, joint commissioner (industries), who serves as the state’s nodal officer for the scheme, said there were sporadic instances of banks under-financing projects, charging additional interest, and not adhering to moratoriums. “We are dealing with such issues firmly. We have a robust system whereby we transfer all benefits such as interest, margin money and credit guarantee within 24 hours of lodging of bank claims,” he said.
Pandian, who hails from Tamil Nadu, gives an outsider’s view of the cultural shift under way: “Certain communities traditionally seek entrepreneurship. In UP, the young generation has now started to aspire to it. It’s a promising change.”
The change is visible. In Ghaziabad, 29-year-old civil engineer Ankit Sharma left a well-paying job at an American company to start JP Eco Build Creations, which makes “zero-pollution bricks” by using fly ash from thermal-power contractors, black ash from paper mill waste, coarse sand, and high-grade cement. Sharma was already into brick-making before he applied for CM YUVA; he used the funding for buying machinery, helping his company boost its production capacity to 6,000 bricks a day.
“In a job, you just wait for March and a nominal increment,” says Sharma. “When you do your own work, you can grow much faster.”
A spurt in the number of small businesses, driven by CM YUVA, could create up to five crore jobs, transforming UP from a labour-exporting state to a manufacturing hub. Early results show rapid loan processing, broad sectoral coverage, and cultural change. But implementation gaps could threaten transformative potential through arbitrary loan reductions, unclear interest reimbursement timelines, and limited scaling support. As Pandian notes, how the first batch performs will determine what happens next.
Back in Ramnagar Taal, Nishad packs up his equipment after another successful borewell. His experience shows that the question is no longer whether the scheme can create success stories. The real question is—can UP scale up these individual successes into a systemic change?