NEW DELHI: Meity minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday said the government has received many applications under the Semiconductor India Programme (PLI scheme) and expected the process to take about 15-18 months to complete.
The minister, while addressing the Semicon India 2022 conference in Bengaluru, said by April or May next year, we will have good news for the nation. “We understand that many countries are offering incentives. But what we offer, along with substantial incentives, is a commitment to create and augment our talent pool by 85000 semiconductor professionals over the next ten years. These will be industry-ready professionals and we have already tied up with global institutions,” said the minister.
The purpose of the Semicon India, the three-day conference is to kickstart India’s ambition in becoming the global electronics and semiconductor design and manufacturing hub. So far India has received investment proposals from five global Semicon majors to set up semiconductor fab and display fab locally in India. The proposals received so far are to the tune of $20.5 billion in the greenfield segment of display and semiconductor chip manufacturing.
At the event, Applied Materials, a leader in material engineering solutions and the largest semiconductor display equipment manufacturer in the world, made an announcement to invest 1800 crore rupees in India. The company has acquired a large land parcel in Bengaluru, to set up the proposed manufacturing facility.
Meanwhile, an MoU was signed between Qualcomm and MeitY’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to support Indian semiconductor startups.
The conference was inaugurated by prime minister Narender Modi, and he said the country has an exceptional semiconductor design talent pool, which makes up for up to 20% of the world’s semiconductor design engineers.