Won’t be fair to compare India with China or Taiwan, says MeitY Joint Secretary Dr. Sunil Pal

Dr. Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), highlighted India’s rapid progress in the electronics and semiconductor sector during the UP Tech Next Summit, stating that the country is moving decisively from assembly to high-value manufacturing.

Stressing the need for realistic benchmarks in India’s semiconductor ambitions, Sushil Pal said, “It won't be fair to compare India with China or Taiwan. They have been in the industry for four-five decades.”

He added that over the next 3–5 years, India’s focus will be on implementing projects already approved under the semiconductor mission. "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,” he noted.

“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,” he said during a panel discussion on ‘The Electronics Breakout: India’s Path from Assembly to Value Addition’.

Emphasising the government’s long-term commitment to the industry, Dr. Pal said, “The Government of India is highly committed and a great believer that electronics and semiconductors form a foundational industry, because electronics is embedded in almost everything we use. It will further become deeply integrated into our lives.”

He added that the government’s focus is to strengthen value addition, enhance domestic capabilities, and build a globally competitive ecosystem for electronics and semiconductor manufacturing.

“We are in active consultation with stakeholders regarding ISM 2.0. The larger focus will be on the ecosystem play, on chips, on modules,” Dr. Pal said, outlining the government’s strategy to deepen domestic semiconductor capabilities.

Emphasising India’s focus on high-volume chip manufacturing, Dr. Sushil Pal, highlighted that mature semiconductor nodes remain the backbone of global chip consumption.

“If you look at the demand for mature nodes, they themselves constitute 70 per cent of the demand in terms of volume. In terms of value, it constitutes 40 per cent,” Dr. Pal said.

“The kind of investment that goes into manufacturing complex nodes is four times what goes into mature nodes,” he noted.

Highlighting the importance of a phased strategy in semiconductor manufacturing, Dr. Pal said, “We must reach the moon first before we go to Mars,” emphasising that achieving scale and capability in mature nodes will be crucial to building a strong foundation for advanced semiconductor ecosystems in the future.