Roadmap soon to create Indian electronics and chip champs: Rajeev

The government is working on a policy roadmap to develop champions in the design of electronic systems and semiconductors in India, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar said. His ministry is working hard to realize the agenda of having a semiconductor fabrication unit in the country and it should materialize in the next 3-5 years, he added.

While speaking at the Global Fintech Festival (GFF) 2021, Chandrashekhar said that they have champions in the software space, they have champions on the internet and fintech and many other areas that are essentially software driven, but (not many) in the electronic systems design space, in the semiconductor design space. He further stated that “as part of broadening and deepening our electronics manufacturing and electronics capabilities, we have a plan that was very quickly worked on after I joined the ministry on July 7, and you will be seeing this being rolled out in October.” India does not want to be a country that only does the software piece, he said.

The government has accelerated efforts to start chip manufacturing in India and is reportedly in talks with Taiwan to bring a $7.5 billion fab unit to the country soon. Also, he said Indian IT firms need to seize the ‘Y2k-like’ moment that the post-covid-19 world has thrown up and that they have to play a bigger role in upskilling talent at scale to take advantage of the opportunity, sparked by increased digitisation due to the pandemic. “The world has dramatically changed, the rapid pace of digitisation has just gone through the roof, and therefore the demand for digitisation and talent is also going to commensurately go sky high, we must recognise that we are in the post-covid-19 world, in almost a Y2k-like moment for the Indian tech space,” he said. ■