India’s first homegrown chip on track for launch this year, says Ashwini Vaishnaw

Ashwini Vaishnaw

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday said that India’s first Made-in-India semiconductor chip is on track to roll out within this year, with construction across all five units progressing as planned.

"All the five units’ construction is going on very well. The plants are now getting set up, and at some locations, machinery validation is already underway. It’s absolutely on track to roll out the first Made-in-India chip this year," Vaishnaw said at Network 18's Rising Bharat Summit 2025.

Tata Electronics in partnership with Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) is building the country’s first semiconductor fab in Dholera, Gujarat.

Earlier, in February last year, the Centre had approved setting up of three semiconductor units in India. In December 2021, the Prime Minister had approved the Semicon India programme with a total outlay of Rs 76,000 crore for the development of semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in our country. The programme aims to provide financial support to companies investing in semiconductors, display manufacturing and design ecosystems.

The government has also set up India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) as an independent business division within Digital India Corporation, to formulate long-term strategies for developing semiconductors and display manufacturing facilities and semiconductor design ecosystem.

On India’s progress in building a foundational AI model, the minister reaffirmed that the timeline of 5–6 months remains realistic. “Absolutely we are on track. India has one of the highest concentrations of talent globally,” he said.

Vaishnaw also highlighted India’s efforts to democratise access to AI compute power, which has drawn praise internationally. “We’ve already empaneled 14,000 GPUs, with more coming soon. This combination of talent and compute is giving a strong edge to our startups and developers,” he said.

Vaishnaw further mentioned that electronics manufacturing in India has grown fivefold in the past decade, with exports increasing sixfold during the same period.

He attributed this to a step-by-step strategy—from assembling finished goods to modules and now components—along with policy support like the recently launched Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for components.

“Electronics manufacturing is giving employment to 25 lakh people, many of whom are from rural areas,” he noted.

The minister also reiterated that India welcomes global players. “Any country or company that wants to come and work in India has full freedom to do so. Companies generally prefer JVs more than they want to go up the learning curve at a faster pace,” he said.