India to become a major semiconductor manufacturing nation in next 5-6 years: Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

India's decades-old dream to become a semiconductor manufacturing hub is finally moving in the right direction. The semiconductor scheme announced in December 2021 has received excellent progress, and a groundbreaking ceremony for the Indian semiconductor unit will happen in 2-3 months, said IT and Electronics minister Ashwini Vaishnav at Business Today's India@100 conclave. However, he did not clarify if the semiconductor unit with OSAT or fab.

In December 2021, the government of India approved a semiconductor incentive scheme worth Rs 76,000 crores to make India a semiconductor nation. But while the government has received three silicon fab and two display fab proposals, they haven't taken a call yet. "Typical decision on semiconductor happens in a timeframe of 14 to 18 months, all over the world," said minister Vaishnaw. He further added, "On January 1 of this year is when we uploaded the applications. Today we are in a position where in the coming two or three months, we should be having the first groundbreaking ceremony for Indian semiconductor manufacturing units."

Acknowledging India needs to accelerate this journey, he said India needs to accept that the world is ahead of us. But he promised that India would get multiple fabs.

Speaking on when India can be a global hub for semiconductor manufacturing, he stated India will become chip design capital for the world soon. "Today in India we have close to 55,000 design semiconductor engineers working for various companies. And as part of our semiconductor program, we have brought out a design-led scheme where the engineers who want to try out their luck in designing semiconductor chips, they can come out and can use common facilities which are getting developed at C-DAC unit in Pune and start up their venture. If they succeed or do not succeed, there is a great ecosystem already there. So I can confidently say that within the next five to six years, we will become a great semiconductor design capital of the world. We will use that capability to feed into our semiconductor manufacturing also."

Union government, at the time of launching the scheme, promised to the world that India will develop 85,000 talents right from PhDs to MTech, etc. And for this, a full cohort of Institutes, almost 48, have already signed up for this program, where the courses are now getting tailored towards semiconductor design and almost all the big international training institutes. They have signed MOU with us within the last eight-nine months added the minister.

As electronics manufacturing grows, the demand for chips is going to increase, and if that demand can be met out of India, it can bring an impactful change in the country.