CHENNAI: India plans to roll out three additional home-grown semiconductor plants this year, S Krishnan, secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), said at the 14th edition of ThinkEdu in Chennai on Monday. He added that the projects would expand the country’s nascent manufacturing base.
Semiconductor production involves a complex, multi-stage process spanning fabrication, followed by assembly, packaging and testing, Krishnan said in the discussion with author Shankkar Aiyar on 'Technology for Transition- India's semiconductor revolution'. India’s first commercial-scale semiconductor fab project under the India Semiconductor Mission, being developed by the Tata Group in Gujarat, marks the country’s entry into the most capital-intensive segment of the value chain.
While global manufacturers, including those in Japan, are moving towards cutting-edge 2-nanometre technology which is still commercially challenging for some established players such as Intel, Krishnan noted that such chips are expensive to produce. India, by contrast, is focusing on legacy semiconductors that continue to be widely used in automobiles, industrial equipment and consumer electronics, even as it gradually moves towards smaller nodes.
On chip design, Krishnan said India enjoys a structural advantage, with about 20% of the world’s semiconductor engineers being Indian. Development centres are coming up in Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, he added.
Reflecting on supply-chain strategy, Krishnan said that while semiconductors were once viewed largely as tradable commodities, the post-Covid period has shifted the focus towards building resilience.
On artificial intelligence, he said India has sought to shape the global narrative around the democratisation of AI. While AI could lead to the loss of around 20 lakh jobs in traditional coding and programming, he said it could also generate nearly 40 lakh new roles for those who understand the technology and can develop applications around it.