China Took 30 Years, Spent $200 Billion To Build Chip Ecosystem But Still Unsuccessful; India Is Trusted, Resilient: MoS IT

One of the challenges in attracting semiconductor giants to India is their skepticism regarding the country's lack of progress in the chips industry over the past several decades, according to Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

In an interview with The Indian Express, Chandrasekhar emphasised the need to convince global chip giants that India now has a thriving electronics ecosystem and is home to some of the world's best factories.

Chandrasekhar cited examples of manufacturing plants in Noida that were built within 12 months and are among the largest in the world for mobile phones.

He further said that the recent dissolution of the Vedanta and Foxconn joint venture to establish a fab in India is not seen as a setback for India's semiconductor ambitions.

According to Chandrasekhar, this development actually presents an opportunity as there will now be two separate proposals instead of one.

In December 2021, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) had announced a $10 billion semiconductor manufacturing plan.

“Both Vedanta and Foxconn have said they will send proposals to set up fabs in India, so we will have two proposals when earlier there was only one proposal," the minister was quoted as saying by IE.

"I don’t think it is a blow, this is actually a good thing for the country where both the partners want to pursue their chip strategy independently,” he added.

Chandrasekhar emphasised the complexity of establishing a successful chip ecosystem, citing the example of China's 30-year struggle despite investing $200 billion.

“The Prime Minister’s vision is to create a successful chip ecosystem in India in the next ten years. Countries like China took 30 years to do that and they are still unsuccessful despite having spent $200 billion on their ambitions… We are a trusted partner to the world, we are resilient, and we represent domestic demand in our own ambitions of digitalisation," Chandrasekhar said.

In addition to the government's focus on semiconductors, Chandrasekhar mentioned the importance of nurturing start-ups capable of designing next-generation chips.

The goal is to build a comprehensive ecosystem around semiconductors.

Chandrasekhar highlighted the evolving approach to technology performance, which no longer follows a unipolar path.

He explained that design innovation, system design, packaging, fabs, and the latest nodes all contribute to enhancing performance.

Chandrasekhar pointed out that companies like Nvidia, despite being fabless, possess intellectual property for the next generation of GPUs. He emphasised the importance of design-led performance and India's potential to become a player in the semiconductor industry.

"Outside of North America, we have the largest pool of semiconductor talent, close to 100,000 engineers are working for the global majors. If they can start developing next generation devices, that is what we want from them,” he said.

According to the minister, the government is providing funding to start-ups in the design space through grants and equity.

Additionally, the government is encouraging big companies to partner with Indian start-ups so that India can have co-owned intellectual property and devices in the short term.