PM Modi launches first India-made chip sets

India on Tuesday achieved a historic milestone in its semiconductor technology assimilation by unveiling the first set of `made-in-India’ chips, manufactured at a pilot plant. Minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, handed over the first chip set to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a Semicon India 2025 function.

The unveiling of the first India-made chip comes three and a half years after the launch of the India Semiconductor Mission in December 2021, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw attributed the success of the mission to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to create a semiconductor ecosystem in the country.

Besides, Vaishnaw presented 20 chips designed and fabricated by Indian students at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) to the prime minister. 

Vaishnaw said the India Semiconductor Mission is built on trust and respect for intellectual property rights, in order to support gevelopment of tghe right supply chain in partnership with global partners. 

Semicon India 2025 saw the sidning if 12 memoranda of understanding (MoUs), covering areas like enhancing product development, expanding service capabilities, and skill development, so as to build a future-ready semiconductor ecosystem in the country.

Vaishnaw also announced the formation of a `Deep Tech Alliance’, with a corpus of around $1 billion, committed by an alliance of venture funds focused on technology, in order to strengthen innovation. The alliance will initially focus on semiconductors and gradully expand operations to other technology fontiers such as clean energy, biotechnology, quantum technologies, and space. 

Meanwhile, the Semiconductor Laboratory at Mohali is undergoing modernisation aimed at increasing production levels and production of new product lines in order to strengthen India’s chip manufacturing capacity. The government is also preparing to launch ISM 2.0 building on the success of ISM 1.0 to broaden and strengthen support for fabs, OSAT units, capital equipment, and materials covering the entire semiconductor value chain.

Vaishnaw said that with two fabs already in place and more in the pipeline, the chips made in India will serve both domestic and global markets. 

Semicon India 2025 has attracted major global stakeholder in the semiconductor industry, including equipment and material suppliers such as ASML, Lam Research, Applied Materials, Merck, and Tokyo Electron.

Vaishnaw said 78 universities across the country are using advanced EDA tools to create a deep talent pool, which would form nearly 20 per cent of the global semiconductor workforce. 

Also, he said, 28 start-ups engaged in the designing of chips are entering the product development phase. Recent MoUs cover complete IoT chipsets and camera systems, while institutions such as IIT Madras have released indigenous microcontrollers and processors. The Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme has generated a portfolio of valuable IPs, and 25 priority products have been identified for development.

With a projected market of $1 trillion by 2030, a large talent pool and the requisite technology, India hopes to emerge as a global leader in semiconductors.