Centre looks beyond startups, chip design scheme to cover big enterprises too

"This is not a short term instant gratification race. This is about a creating a mahaul," quipped Chandrasekhar on the sidelines of the Semicon India 2023 conference

The government is considering whether it could extend a funding scheme for semiconductor design startups to include even bigger companies, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on July 29.

"One of the suggestions that have come up is that the design side not be limited only to startups. If there's a big Indian company or a big foreign company that wants to do chip design in India, we should allow the future design scheme also to support them. So, I am studying that," the minister told reporters on the sidelines of the SemiconIndia 2023 conference in Gandhinagar.

"We could say that as long as the intellectual property is Indian, anybody who has an original chip design can apply to it, and we will look at supporting it financially," the Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics and Information Technology added.

Also read: CDAC partners with Arm to aid semiconductor startups under DLI scheme

The Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme aims to offer financial incentives as well as design infrastructure support across various stages of development and deployment of semiconductor design(s) for Integrated Circuits (ICs), Chipsets, System on Chips (SoCs), Systems & IP Cores and semiconductor linked design(s) over a period of five years.

India is also trying to attract major semiconductor players to set up chip fabrication and assembling plants in the country with a $10 billion subsidy programme.

Also read: India is laying out a red carpet for the semiconductor industry, says PM Modi

In his address, Chandrasekhar talked about the progress made by the domestic semiconductor industry in less than two years since the inception of the government’s chip programme. He said that India’s aim was to become a strong global player in semiconductors within the next decade.

“We intend to build a robust, vibrant, globally competitive presence in the global semiconductor ecosystem in the next 10 years with the capital that PM Narendra Modi has given us. We certainly want to do what countries to the North of us took 200 billion dollars in 30 years and could not succeed. The Future is Bright and the Future is India in the semiconductor ecosystem,” the minister said during his address in Gandhinagar.

During Modi's recent visit to the US, semiconductor major Micron committed to set up a $2.7 billion assembling plant in the country. According to estimates, the Centre and state government of Gujarat will cumulatively bear 70 percent of the cost of the project in the form of subsidies.

Also read: Vedanta to launch first made-in-India chip in 2.5 years: Anil Agarwal

The minister highlighted how India has built global partnerships with other countries, including Japan and the US in critical areas of technology, including semiconductors. He mentioned that in the past 15 months, there have been important visits and agreements between India and other nations, marking significant milestones.

"This is not a short-term instant gratification race. This is about creating a mahaul," he told reporters on the sidelines. 

"We have a whole history of creating cynicism and scepticism in the community that is supposed to be optimistic about investing. So that is not a small problem to solve. So that we have done in 15 months itself. So that is a big mountain to have climbed and conquered," he added.