UP Tech Next Summit Live Updates: Competing with Nvidia requires original strategy, not following their playbook, says Parag Naik

Mohammed Athar, Partner, PwC: India’s semiconductor industry has great demand coming from the auto, telecom and healthcare industries. India’s competitive advantage is that 20-25% of design talent is in Bengaluru.

Ravi Ranjan, Managing Director, UP Electronics Corporation: UP govt is creating an inflection point. We have dedicated a 1000-acre semiconductor park near Jewar airport. With open arms, inviting big companies and startups. We have an ecosystem of startups in UP that are designing chips. The Uttar Pradesh govt has allocated Rs 1000 crore in funds for deep tech startups. UP is doing well in design centres. UP is not just trying to catch the wind but has a vision for the long term.

Parag Naik, Co-Founder & CEO, Saankhya Labs: We have the skills; what we don't have is the ability to take risks and patience because these things take a long time. We can't see progress and innovation in manufacturing.

Parag Naik: We know what it takes to build a semiconductor facility over the last 17 years. Our first set of investors was none of the big tech investors; they were villagers.

Parag Naik: If you start to follow someone like Nvidia, then it is difficult to beat them in their own game.

Pankaj Mahindroo, chairman, India Cellular and Electronics Association: What is the import of electronics in China? It is $700 billion. But they export $1 trillion worth. We need to export more than import.

We are building a middle layer. We have a disadvantage in capital cost and interest rate compared to China & Vietnam.

We need more roadshows by UP ministers to attract investments. We have something to show now.

Pankaj Mahindroo: One of the biggest weaknesses of UP is that leaders and bureaucrats do not travel to get investments

Rajesh Agarwal, co-founder, Micromax and Bhagwati Products: Education helps, but not the only driver. The competency and skill are amazing. Employees can pick up skills. Language is not a barrier. Even the key business people speak Hindi.

We are going to invest heavily in UP. We will invest close to Rs 5,000 crore in UP over the next 3 years.

MeitY's vision to increase India's share in the global value chain: Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary, MeitY

Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary, MeitY: For the electronic industry to become sustainable, we need to have some national champions and in certain MSMEs, too

Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary, MeitY: We hope the US tariff will be sorted soon

Pankaj Mahindroo, chairman, India Cellular and Electronics Association: Our biggest fault line is we are very inward looking, which shows in our merchandise exports.

Pankaj Mahindroo, chairman, India Cellular and Electronics Association: We are told in UP to be in our "Aukaat", and we run ahead of ourselves as a country

Pankaj Mahindroo, chairman, India Cellular and Electronics Association: Developing UP is in national interest. The chill factor is minimal now. The core of every industry is entrepreneurs and companies to take the risk capital. It is to be cherished most.

Pankaj Mahindroo, chairman, India Cellular and Electronics Association: Government is taking the honest feedback very positively. The criticism has to be constructive and needs to be told us what to do.

Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary, MeitY: Need to keep in mind that no country can actually become self-sufficient in electronic sector

Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary, Meaty: We are actually self-sufficient in at least the critical technologies, but want to make sure that whatever supply chain will depend on those are highly diversified.

JPS Rathore, Minister of State (Independent Charge) Cooperative, Uttar Pradesh: Cooperative is an economic model for Vikas, and the Prime Minister and Home Minister are working towards making it better.

JPS Rathore: Cooperative is also a feeling, not just a system. People join this feeling by contributing small amounts, and people themselves contribute towards making the system work.

JPS Rathore: The state of cooperatives in UP was not okay earlier; now I don't want to say anything against the people in the past but under Yogi Adityanath's government, cooperatives are reaching new heights

Dinesh Pratap Singh (MoS, Uttar Pradesh): For Uttar Pradesh, Jewar is the lifeline for export. The airport will reduce the logistic cost of our exports, and our farmers will get a good price for their produce.

Dinesh Pratap Singh: Near Jewar airport, we need a sorting and treatment facility which will help to certify our farmer’s produce as per the requirements and quality standards of the importing countries

Dinesh Pratap Singh (MoS, Uttar Pradesh): We need to increase the shelf life of our produce. We are a landlocked state, without waterways, so our transportation costs is higher. Hence, we need to increase the shelf life of our produce.

Dinesh Pratap Singh (MoS, Uttar Pradesh): There’s lot of scope of progress still left in agriculture and horticulture sectors compared to the technological advancement in other sectors.

Dinesh Pratap Singh: We have set up two centres of excellence in each of UP’s 75 districts.

Sushil Pal, joint secretary, MeitY

Sushil Pal: If you look at the demand for mature nodes, they itself constitute 70 per cent of the demand in terms of volume. In terms of value, it constitutes of 40 per cent.

That being said, we should also look at complexity of manufacturing complex nodes. The kind of investment that goes into this is 4x of what goes into mature nodes.

Sushil Pal: We must reach the moon first before we go the Mars (on manufacturing complex nodes)

Sushil Pal: It won't be fair to compare India with China or Taiwan. They have been in the industry for four-five decades.

Sushil Pal: India's focus in the 3-5 will be to execute the projects that have already been approved. To ensure that they survive the business; to ensure that not just ATMP, fabs, but also materials and other components shift to the country.

Sushil Pal, joint secretary, MeitY: We are in active consultation with stakeholders regarding ISM 2.0. The larger focus will be on the ecosystem play, on chips, on modules

Sushil Pal: The journey so far has been highly fruitful. From 2014 to the present time, we have been growing at a CAGR of 20 per cent.

Ashok Chandak, President, SEMI India and India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA): Talent or the skill manpower for semiconductor industry is going to be a big problem next five years worldwide. Demand for specialised roles is increasing manifold and those do not exist.

Vivek Tyagi, Managing Director and Country Manager, Analog Devices: Bangalore obviously have a headstart, besides Bangalore, Hyderabad and Noida have also emerged as centres. With 400 engineering colleges in Uttar Pradesh  and there is enough potential here.

Vivek: In the future, if it is more design-led manufacturing, it will create much more value and jobs for our ecosystem than just assembling here in India.

Ashok Chandak, President, SEMI India and India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) : There is atleast 700,000 shortage of manpower for the semiconductor industry. From design to manufacturing.

Ashok: There is a lot of curiosity and interest from the student community in semiconductors. We need to develop that in universities.

Wasi Uddin, Head of R&D, Kaynes Semicon: If there is a limitation on budget, if any investor doesn't want to open a fab. Noone is making a lead frame for us. We are still importing. More than 90% are lead frame based manufacturing.

Wasi Uddin: This is a huge market. On the policy side, we need to push for more ecosystem players to come in.

Wasi Uddin: We have a demand for 2-5 billion lead frames. This market is worth 3000 crores. We need to develop these ecosystem players as well.

Ashok Chandak, President, IESA: Today we are an unprecedented scale of electronics manufacturing in the country. We are growing our semiconductor supply. We also have the largest design pool of the chip design engineers worldwide, sitting right in India. The biggest shortfall we have is India does not have the manufacturing technology, where we are dependent on other countries.

Vyshali Sagar: What we got right is infrastructure, talent, and great policies, but what got us here won't get us where we want to be in the next 20 years when it comes to the semiconductor industry.

Vyshali Sagar: There is a greater need for talent, an incentive stack that we need to work on. R&D grants and how do we link to commercial use cases, we need to look at how to link this.

Something that's not really talked about is the universities. How do we bring more pathways to procurement when it comes to startups.

Vivek Tyagi, Managing Director and Country Manager, Analog Devices: Approximately 20% of the design engineers are based in India. With DLI by Meity we can see a lot of companies mushrooming in India. While manufacturing is a new activity. We should not forget that we should not forget that we are already leaders in some parts.

Awanish Awasthi: Excise revenue has increased four times from 2017, revenue in GST has increased tremendously, revenue from transport has increased two times in last 2-3 years, revenue from mining has tripled from 2017.

Awanish Awasthi: Very soon, we will come up with strategies where the private sector will not be charged for land upfront, but lease rent for land will be collected later as the project gets profitable.

Awanish Awasthi: We are the second largest producer in fruits and vegetables. The idea is to take UP to the nominal growth of the state to 20%

Awanish Awasthi: We are proposing an AI city in Lucknow. We will follow the PPP model.

Awanish Awasthi: UP has the largest budget in the country of over Rs 8 lakh crore. Rs 2 lakh crore is our capital budget. We have surplus budget of about Rs 55,000-60,000 crore

Awanish Awasthi: Jewar will be one of the largest airports in Asia

Awanish Awasthi: Expect in the next 2-3 months, HCL-Foxconn work will begin, and land has already been allotted.

Awanish Awasthi: Very soon, HCL-Foxconn will be approved by the Uttar Pradesh cabinet, we will see work start on ground

Awanish Awasthi: We have started increasing our contribution to India's GDP. Our nominal growth is more than 15%. Our nominal growth has to become 20% to reach the target, for which tourism has done extremely well. UP will have 100 cr tourists in the current year. We need to work in areas of IT, manufacturing.

Awanish Kumar Awasthi, Advisor to Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh: Viksit Bharat means economy should be $30tn in 2047, so in line UP should be at $6tn economy

Today's Uttar Pradesh is not the old Uttar Pradesh. Electronics cluster should be set up in all key regions of UP, we're aiming for that, says Sunil Kumar Sharma, Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh.

To achieve $1 trillion economy by UP, electronics, IT and ITes will play a big role in it, says Sunil Kumar Sharma, Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh.

We are not concerned about tariffs, says Sunil Kumar Sharma, Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh.

We're behind Taiwan for now, but we should be ahead of them (in terms of manufacturing), says Sunil Kumar Sharma, Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh.

Centre's semiconductor policy is encouraging. UP government has given the JV 60% of capital. We'll provide with them with electricity, and 24 hours water supply, says  Sunil Kumar Sharma, Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh.

By 2027-28, operations will begin of HCL-Foxconn JV. The Uttar Pradesh government has allotted the land to them, says  Sunil Kumar Sharma, Minister for Information Technology and Electronics, Uttar Pradesh.

Uttar Pradesh has a major role in semiconductor manufacturing, says Moneycontrol Managing Editor Nalin Mehta

UP is a crucial power house, has begun a new transformation, says Moneycontrol Managing Editor Nalin Mehta

In “The Electronics Breakout,” speakers including Micromax co-founder Rajesh Agarwal will outline India’s transition from assembly-led electronics to higher value-addition.

A major industry panel — “Policy, Innovation & Production: The New Architecture of India’s Semiconductor Rise” — will bring together leaders such as Vivek Tyagi (Analog Devices), Ashok Chandak (SEMI India), Wasi Uddin (Kaynes Semicon) and Vyshali Sagar (Micron India). The panel is expected to explore how India will scale innovation and production across the chip value chain.

“The UP Semiconductor Playbook” will be presented by Awanish Kumar Awasthy, Advisor to the Chief Minister, who will detail the state’s strategy to position Uttar Pradesh as a competitive global hub for chip manufacturing.

Uttar Pradesh IT & Electronics Minister Sunil Kumar Sharma will deliver the first keynote, where he is expected to outline the state’s semiconductor and electronics mission — showcasing progress so far and the road ahead.