The Government said the Semicon India Programme aims to build a complete semiconductor ecosystem from design to manufacture and has approved 10 projects with investment commitments of about Rs 1.6 tn. Commercial production has begun at two plants and two more are expected to start later this year. The programme was launched in January 2022 to scale fabrication, assembly, testing, packaging and module manufacture.

Targeted policies over the last 11 years have driven substantial growth in electronics manufacturing. Production of electronics goods rose from Rs 1.9 tn to Rs 12 tn, exports grew from Rs 380 bn to Rs 3.3 tn and mobile phone production increased from Rs 180 bn to Rs 5.45 tn. The Government attributed the expansion to measures supporting domestic manufacturing and exports.

The Government supported chip design by providing tools from eight companies to 315 universities at no cost, with usage exceeding 20 mn hours. Using those tools 211 chips have been taped out by 75 institutions and 149 chips were produced at 180 nm while 62 were fabricated at overseas foundries. Authorities approved 24 design projects addressing surveillance, drone detection, energy metering, microprocessors, satellite communications, broadband and internet of things system on chips (SoCs).

14 design companies have attracted venture capital totalling more than Rs 6.5 bn and seven chips have been fabricated at nodes including 12 nm. The Government has signed memorandums of understanding with the United States, Japan, the European Union, Singapore and the Netherlands to strengthen supply chain resilience. Under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), 10 semiconductor units are under construction and 249 applications have been received under the Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS).

Industry estimates indicate the electronics sector supports 2.5 mn jobs, with mobile phone manufacturing alone sustaining about 1.2 mn jobs. Approved manufacturing projects include a Micron facility in Gujarat with investment of Rs 225.16 bn and a Tata Electronics project in Gujarat of Rs 915.26 bn, alongside other facilities covering wafer starts, packaging and assembly expected to boost domestic capacity across memory, logic, display driver and packaging segments.