India is accelerating the development of its domestic semiconductor manufacturing, hoping to transform itself from a highly dependent on imports to a more globally competitive chip supplier.
The Economic TimesThe report pointed outThe Indian government plans to launch its first "Made in India" chip by the end of this year, and simultaneously promote the construction of six semiconductor factories in preparation for mass production operations, thereby strengthening its influence in the global technology supply chain.
According to Ashwini Vaishnaw, India's Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, in a public speech, several cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai have become important centers for advanced chip design, and the Indian government has also invested resources to expand the manufacturing sector.
The six wafer fabs are currently under active construction and are expected to be completed by the end of 2025 and begin producing semiconductor products with Indian native technology background.
This plan is also closely related to India's "AI Mission". The Indian government has released large-scale free dataset resources and plans to train more than 100 million professionals related to artificial intelligence applications to lay the foundation for local digital and industrial transformation.
Relevant analysis points out that although India's current semiconductor projects are mostly concentrated in the "assembly, packaging and testing" stage, which is the end link of the manufacturing process and has a relatively low technical threshold, due to its labor-intensive nature, it will be a practical starting point for the Indian semiconductor industry, which is still in its early stages, to enter the global market.
Among them, although the factory led by the Tata Group does not yet have the ability to manufacture advanced process chips, its products can be widely used in automobiles and entry-level smartphones, which will help to quickly form the basic volume of the domestic demand market.
At present, more than 90% of India's domestic chip demand still relies on imports, which has caused a huge impact on its economy and national security during the global chip shortage during the epidemic. Pranay Kotasthane, a scholar at the Bangalore think tank Takshashila Institution, pointed out that without the support of the local semiconductor industry, India may be completely excluded from future technology industry competition.
However, the Economist report also pointed out potential concerns. As the Indian government actively subsidizes and invests more in wafer fab construction, whether it will require companies to use domestic chips whose quality is not yet mature has also triggered internal discussions in the industry.
At the same time, many experts believe that the Indian government should focus more on breaking the bottlenecks that restrict local chip design companies, especially since there are currently more than 12.5 Indian engineers engaged in the global chip design industry, most of whom work in major international companies. How to get these talents to return to local startups will be the key to whether Indian semiconductors can truly take off.
