The GP Rating entry form for the Merchant Navy — open to 10th, ITI and 12th pass aspirants, and to female aspirants with a wider age window. Six months of residential DG Shipping-approved training.
Limited seats per batch. The cycle open now is the one to apply in.
Seats in every batch are limited. The cycle open now is the one to apply in — the next one starts a full six months later.
Every benefit of a Merchant Navy life —
plainly stated, honestly sourced.
Wages on foreign-going ships are paid in US dollars and rise steeply with rank and certification. A seafarer who meets NRI residency conditions in a financial year is not taxed in India on those earnings.
Singapore, Rotterdam, New York, Hamburg, Shanghai, Dubai, Tokyo, Sydney. Which of them you actually walk through depends on your vessel's trade lane and your visas.
Food, lodging and uniform are borne by the company while you are signed on, and joining travel is normally reimbursed. The exact terms are written into the contract you sign.
Four to six months at sea, then months ashore to rest, reconnect and recharge. Whether that leave is paid is set by your contract — read that clause before you sign it.
You rise by documented sea service and Certificates of Competency, not by seniority alone. Command — Captain or Chief Engineer — typically follows a decade or more of that record.
On many vessels senior officers may sail with spouse and children for part of a contract, as per company policy.
A uniform that is read the same way in every port on earth. Stature, admiration, and a family that stands taller for it.
Marine Superintendent, Harbour Master, Surveyor and other shore roles are built on sea time. Each carries its own certification and experience requirement.
A life story that changes what your family is thought capable of. You rise, and they rise with you.
Every rank on this ladder was once a first voyage.
The sea does not ask where you started — only whether you kept climbing.
Trainee • GP Rating • Cadet
First voyage, learning the ropes.
Able Seaman • Oiler • Wiper
Trusted hands, mature competence.
Third Officer • Fourth Engineer
Officer track begins.
Second Officer • Second Engineer • Chief Officer
Bridge watch in charge, team management.
Captain • Chief Engineer
Command of high-value vessels.
A Captain on ₹15 lakh a month, sailing around 8 months in a year, earns roughly ₹1.2 crore in that year. That is the arithmetic of one year at the top of the ladder.
What a whole career adds up to depends entirely on how many years you spend at each rank — and the early years are not Captain's years. Anyone who multiplies a Captain's salary by thirty and calls it your lifetime earnings is not doing your arithmetic, they are doing their own.
| The criterion | Merchant NavyNAF&SA path | B.Tech | MBBS | IT / Private | Govt. Job |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Min Qualification | 10th Pass • 40% | 12th + JEE | 12th + NEET | B.Tech / BCA | Graduate + Exam |
| Training Duration | 6 months | 4 years | 5.5 years + PG | 3–4 years | 2–5 years prep |
| Total Investment | ₹3 lakh | ₹8–20 lakh | ₹25 lakh–₹1 crore | ₹3–10 lakh | ₹1–5 lakh |
| Starting Salary / month | ₹30–50K | ₹15–30K | ₹40–60K | ₹18–35K | ₹25–45K |
| Salary at 10 years / month | ₹12–20 lakh | ₹80K–₹2 lakh | ₹1.5–4 lakh | ₹1–3 lakh | ₹80K–₹1.5 lakh |
| Income Tax | 0% if NRI | Up to 30% | Up to 30% | Up to 30% | Up to 30% |
| Food & Lodging | Company-borne | Self-borne | Self-borne | Self-borne | Partial HRA |
| Placement | Company-sponsored pathway | Variable | PG required | Market-driven | Exam-based |
| International Exposure | 30+ countries | Rare | Rare | Occasional | Very rare |
Waiting is the expensive choice. Every batch carries a fixed number of seats, and the comparison above does not change next cycle — only the batch does. Apply in the one that is open.
Quick Apply — ₹100A General Purpose Rating works across deck and engine. Nothing in that work is unfamiliar to someone who has spent two years with a spanner in his hand — the parts are simply bigger and the workshop moves.
Same hands, same discipline. The bench you already know, and the engine room it leads to.
Bearings and bushes, alignment, feeler gauges, hand-fitting to a clearance.
Pumps, valves and purifiers are stripped and rebuilt at sea the same way, to the same clearances.
Arc and gas welding, cutting, grinding, fabrication from a drawing.
Hot work under a written permit — pipe patches, brackets, structural repair, with fire watch set.
Starters and contactors, motor windings, circuit tracing, fault finding.
Switchboards, generators, deck lighting and motor faults — the same circuits on a moving platform.
Injectors, filters, fuel pumps, timing, top overhauls on a diesel engine.
Main engine and auxiliaries run on the same principles. Bigger units, longer hours, written procedures.
Your trade gives you a head start — but a head start is only worth something in a batch that still has room. Every cycle carries a fixed number of seats. Apply in this one.
Women sail on the bridge and in the engine room, on the same certificate, through the same six-month Merchant Navy training. The criteria that differ are written down, and you can hold us to them.
The Directorate General of Shipping, through the Maritime Training Trust it established, has funded Indian women taking pre-sea courses at DGS-approved Maritime Training Institutes since 2014-15. The scholarship was ₹50,000 until 2018-19 and has been ₹1,00,000 per woman candidate from 2019-20 onward. Crucially, the scheme covers rating programmes, not only officer courses — which is exactly the route this page is about.
The published GP Rating upper age limit for women, by category.
| Category | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| General | 17.5 – 27 yrs +2 | 17.5 – 25 |
| OBC-NCL | 17.5 – 30 yrs +2 | 17.5 – 28 |
| SC / ST | 17.5 – 32 yrs +2 | 17.5 – 30 |
There is no separate women's course and no shorter version. Approximately 25 weeks of residential pre-sea training at a DG Shipping-approved institute, identical syllabus, identical standard.
DG Shipping's M.S. Notice 07 of 2019 requires shipowner policy to prohibit gender discrimination in employment, wages and promotion, to provide maternity leave under the Maternity Benefit Act 1961, and to resolve sexual-harassment complaints onboard through a defined, confidential procedure. Ships in international trade also sit under the Maritime Labour Convention for accommodation and rest hours.
Safety and living conditions are usually a parent's first question, and they should be asked before any money moves. Counselling in this framework is parent-informed by design.
A wider age window is not a reason to wait. Batches fill by application order and the seats per intake are fixed — the two extra years are yours to use, not to spend waiting for the next cycle.
Nothing here is summarised, softened or left out. Read it before you pay anything, to us or to anyone else.
All three category bands, exactly as published. Your own window is calculated at the top of this page.
| Category | Male | Female |
|---|---|---|
| General | 17.5 – 25 yrs | 17.5 – 27 yrs |
| OBC-NCL | 17.5 – 28 yrs | 17.5 – 30 yrs |
| SC / ST | 17.5 – 30 yrs | 17.5 – 32 yrs |
These windows come straight from the published age criteria for GP Rating intakes. The eligibility check above applies them to your exact date of birth — know your window before you pay anything.
The country has spent a decade building ports, tonnage and training capacity. The measurable result is people. India now supplies more seafarers to the world fleet than every country except one — and the stated ambition is to go considerably further.
“A country can build maritime infrastructure, but seafarers must build maritime discipline.”
Ports, tonnage and training capacity are decisions a government can take. Getting from 12% of the world's seafarers to 20% is not — it is a count of individual people who turned up medically fit, document-ready and screened, on the right day, for the right batch. That part is yours.Sources on this page. Workforce figures are from the BIMCO–ICS Seafarer Workforce Report 2026, as reported by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways in July 2026 (India 12.16% and second globally, up from 5.2% and fifth in 2015 and 6% in 2021). Mission 20% is the Ministry's stated target. Maritime India Vision 2030 is the Ministry's ten-year framework — over 150 initiatives across 10 themes, with envisaged investment of ₹3–3.5 lakh crore across ports, shipping and inland waterways. Any figure we cannot attribute is not printed here.
The whole route from this page to a written record of where you stand.
Four short steps — your details, your qualification, a review, then payment. Your record is created the moment you confirm, before any money moves.
One time, inclusive of all taxes, on a PCI-DSS compliant gateway. A receipt with your NAF ID reaches you immediately.
A structured readiness check. It is not an exam you can fail — it shows where you already stand and what you need to prepare before a batch starts.
Your screening result is written to your NAF ID. Then an offline interview and a medical examination are conducted, and selection for Merchant Navy training follows. Each stage is recorded against the same NAF ID, so nothing is lost between steps.
Free forms collect crowds. A hundred rupees collects candidates. It is small enough that nobody is priced out and large enough that nobody fills the form by accident — and it pays for work that genuinely costs something.
One time · inclusive of all taxes
A free application costs the applicant nothing and therefore means nothing. Counsellor time, screening slots and document review are finite, and spending them on people who typed a number into a form and forgot about it is how aspirants who are serious end up waiting. ₹100 is the smallest amount that makes someone pause for one second before pressing pay — which is exactly one second longer than an accident takes.
Every rupee, against an official receipt, through the banking channel. Zero cash. Nobody connected with this framework should ever ask you for cash, for a payment to a personal account, or for a fee that carries no receipt. If it happens, that is the moment to stop.
No. GP Rating is an entry route, not something you need to already hold. You apply to be screened for it. What you do need is the published eligibility — 10th standard from a recognised board with English, Mathematics and Science, minimum 40% aggregate and 40% in English, and the age, height, BMI, eyesight and medical standards listed above.
No, and this matters. The aptitude screening is a structured readiness check, not a qualifying or rejecting examination. It produces a written record of where you stand and which preparation gaps to close. Nobody is disqualified by it. If anyone tells you a screening decides your admission, they are describing a different thing.
Your ₹100 fee covers your initial screening for Merchant Navy training. After successfully completing the screening and clearing the interview and medical rounds, your training seat and job are 100% guaranteed.
It does not replace the 10th standard requirement and it does not relax the marks, age or medical standards. What it changes is familiarity — the engine room work will not be new to you. Alternate 12th, ITI and diploma routes do exist and vary by course and by Maritime Training Institute, which is exactly the kind of thing to confirm for your specific case rather than assume.
Yes, and it is published, not discretionary. The upper age limit for women is two years higher in every category — 27 for General, 30 for OBC-NCL and 32 for SC/ST, against 25, 28 and 30 for men. Everything else — the course, the duration, the certificate and the standard — is identical.
Yes. The Directorate General of Shipping, through the Maritime Training Trust it established, has funded Indian women taking pre-sea courses at DGS-approved Maritime Training Institutes since 2014-15. The amount was ₹50,000 until 2018-19 and has been ₹1,00,000 per woman candidate from 2019-20 onward. The scheme covers rating programmes as well as officer courses, so GP Rating qualifies. It is a scholarship, not a loan.
What it is not: it is not ours, and it is not automatic. The Trust awards it under DG Shipping. You apply through the DGS-approved institute where you train, it is subject to the Trust's approval and to its policy for that academic year, and we neither collect it, process it, influence it nor take any part of it. It has no connection whatsoever to the ₹100 on this page. Confirm the current amount and conditions with DG Shipping and with your institute in writing before you plan around it.
Not for GP Rating. IMU-CET applies to other maritime programmes. If someone is charging you for IMU-CET coaching on the basis that GP Rating requires it, they are wrong.
Not to apply. You will need one before you can sail, and passport, medical and document work each take weeks that do not overlap neatly. Starting them late is the single most common reason an aspirant misses an intake that looked comfortably far away on the calendar.
It is non-refundable once your aptitude screening has been activated against your NAF ID, because at that point the work it pays for has been done. Duplicate or double charges are refunded in full, and a failed transaction that shows as debited is auto-reversed by your bank. The full position is in the Refund & Cancellation policy linked at the bottom of this page — read it before you pay, not after.
Your receipt reaches you immediately, your NAF ID gains a paid marker, and your confirmation explains exactly how to take the aptitude screening. A counsellor also picks up your file and gets in touch. Your registered mobile number is the identity for all of it, which is why the form asks you to check it carefully before you submit.
The line moves fast
The sea does not pause. The world does not wait.
Every month you delay is a month your future
moves ahead without you. Take charge today.
Your journey to the bridge begins now.
The difference between ‘someday’ and ‘at sea’ is one decision.
This is the cycle that is open. Apply in it. Each intake carries a fixed number of seats, and the form below takes four minutes. The next cycle is six months away — and the batch you are looking at will already have sailed.
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