India to tap new opportunities in chip design & manufacturing

India can tap new opportunities in areas like semiconductor design, electronic systems design and electronics manufacturing services, on top of its core capability over the next 5-7 years, Minister of State for Electronics and IT R Chandrasekhar said while speaking at the Microsoft Future Ready event, the Minister said the next wave of computing performance is going to come from software optimisation, semiconductor design, electronic systems design, and innovation. "... We were software providers and now we can, in the next five to seven years, be software providers, we can be semi-conductor design providers.

We can be ER&D providers, we can be electronic systems, design providers, and we can be electronics, manufacturing services providers. "There is a whole new layering of opportunities on top of what our core capability was for the last 15, 20 years. There has to be the vision of building the USD 1 trillion digital economy in the country will be achieved in partnership with industry, entrepreneurs and academia.The Minister said every corporate and government is now in a race to digitalise itsgovernance, functions, services and business and is going through a huge disruptive transformation.

The next wave of computing performance is going to come from softwareoptimization, semiconductor design, electronic systems design, and innovation and there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity in the world for trusted manufacturing and trusted partners in their value chain. In December 2021, the Union cabinet approved a ₹76,000-crore scheme to boost semiconductor and display manufacturing capabilities. According to government estimates, the Indian semiconductor market was worth ₹1.13 trillion in 2020, and is expected to touch ₹4.73 trillion by 2026.

Talking about user data security amid rapid digitisation, Chandrasekhar said the internet in India will always be open, safe, trusted, and accountable.As India is poised for rapid take off and is set to become a manufacturing centre for the world, we too look forward to setting new standards of excellence in electronics and introducing our range of products and services to the furthest corners of the globe.

Finally, the emergence of the local market and the inflow of funds in India, in the form of venture capital, is fuelling the growth of the semiconductor design sector in India. Secondly, the advantage of India over many countries such asTaiwan and China in the form of robust developed software sector, copyright laws and availability of large number of English-speaking people, is boosting the growth of semiconductor designing in the country. Finally, this is the Y2K moment for the Indian digital space. The next 4-5 years present a huge opportunity to do a step function jump.