India aims to have 3 or 4 semiconductor fabs in next 5 years: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Close to 30 percent of global chip design talent is in India, Vaishnaw said

The government's goal is to have three to four semiconductor fabrication plants in India in the next five years, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on February 21.

"The next level of productivity in chips will come from advanced manufacturing and packaging... In next 5 years, our target is to have 3 or 4 fabs. We will see the first chip rollout in December 2024 itself," he said.

"Close to 30 percent of global chip design talent is in India. The most complex chips are designed in India. Within design, how do we go from being a back office to developing products? Very soon we will see atleast 2 or 3 more approvals in fab and ATMP," he added.

Vaishnaw was referring to approvals in the $10 billion capex linked incentive scheme for semiconductor fabs and packaging projects in India.

The government had launched the Semicon India Programme in December 2021 with an outlay of a billion dollars, or Rs 76,000 crore at the time, for the development of semiconductors and display manufacturing ecosystem in India.

Under the programme, fiscal incentive of 50 percent of the project cost is available to companies/consortia/ joint ventures for setting up of semiconductor fabs in India of any node size (including mature nodes). Similarly, a fiscal incentive of 50 percent of the project cost is available for setting up of display fabs of specified technologies in India.

The application window for the scheme is open till December 2024.

Application window of a separate Rs 1,100 crore Design Linked Incentive Scheme (for design of chips) is also open till December 2024. Dozens of applications have been received under DLI Scheme and several applications have been granted approval.

"We will focus on 10 to 15 tech and put razor sharp focus on them in the spirit of public-private partnership which can then be exported also," Vaishnaw said today at the launch of PhonePe's app store called Indus in Delhi.

"In the last decade, India has made big strides in terms of connectivity, applications. Many applications are today going global. 15 years ago the world looked at us as a consumer of tech. Now it looks at us as a co-creator and co-developer of tech, be it AI or quantum," he added.

The telecom and information technology minister also said that there will be significant disruptions in the next few years in how the telecom industry operates.

"6G development will happen in next 5 years. They will be most important years for development of 6G. There will be significant disruptions in how telecom industry operates. The times of buying software only from hardware provider is gone. They are getting separated. That's where we can take the lead," he said.