Upcoming fab, expanding design startup ecosystem strengthening India’s semiconductor focus: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The Minister of State for Electronics and IT, at the third SemiconIndia futureDESIGN roadshow at IIT Delhi, talked about India’s chip manufacturing and design vision as well as policy incentives, and added: “it is an exciting time and opportunity to be a semiconductor startup as new global order is being built.”

From near-zero levels just a year-and-a-half ago, India is now well on its way to having 100 semiconductor design startups by 2024. Currently as many as 27-30 design and semiconductor start-ups are “doing very good work”, Chandrasekhar said.

“We are shortly going to announce a fab, and shortly going to announce the first packaging investment, we have the ability today to showcase almost 30 design startups and we are going to launch India semiconductor research centre. So India’s place in future of semiconductor innovation, electronics innovation and manufacturing is certainly now on the move,” he said.

Citing global companies like Apple, Cisco and Samsung that have deepened their commitment here, Chandrasekhar said India’s role in future of technology and global supply and value chain as well as innovation ecosystem “is firmly established”.

“Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) which is the Government fab is going to be upgraded at investment of almost 2 billion dollars and will also be part of the ecosystem that will lend itself to research and prototyping capacities for semiconductor ecosystem,” he said.

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The Semicon India Future Design roadshow aims to encourage innovation, facilitate investment and catalyse the Startups ecosystem in the semiconductor design and manufacturing space. The digital economy has now expanded from one being centred around IT/ITES to one that covers the entire spectrum of technology – deep tech, artificial intelligence, space, and semiconductors. The Government is working in collaboration with industry, startups and academia to transform India from a consumer of technology to the producer of technology, and for achieving our $1 trillion digital economy goal, the minister said.

During the roadshow, global semiconductor leaders like Hidetoshi Shibata, President and CEO of Renesas Technology and Vivek Lall, Chief Executive of General Atomics also shared their vision and expressed interest in collaboration with Indian startups.

The roadshow also saw announcement about two new futureDESIGN Start-ups — Morphing Machines and Netrasemi — being approved under the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme.

India is emerging as a central and strong part of global value chains, the Minister said and highlighted that enabling policies, the Rs 76,000-crore incentive scheme for chip-making, large talent pool and skilling programme is playing to the country’s strength and mark India’s rise as a semiconductor nation.

“India tecade is a decade full of technology opportunities…those are tech opportunities available for young Indians all over the country,” he said.