Bengaluru: The massive growth in electronics production in India – both for consumption domestically and for exports is fuelling the “underlying semiconductor demand” making a solid case for India to start manufacturing its own chips, said minister of state for electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

ET reported on Thursday that
Apple’s contract manufacturers are expected to make iPhones worth ₹47,000 crore in India this fiscal, the second year of the production linked incentives (PLI) scheme that started in April. This will be almost five times the ₹10,000 crore worth of iPhones made in the country in FY22 by Foxconn and Wistron.

Chandrasekhar said that the other reasons why India should get into semiconductor manufacturing is because, the design and innovation ecosystem in India is strong, and the the country is leading in the three main drivers for semiconductors – automotive, compute and mobile devices and new generation of processors which are data driven, artificial intelligence.

Chandrasekhar was speaking in Bengaluru ahead of the three day SemiconIndia Conference 2022. The conference which will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday “is envisioned as the launch pad to kickstart India’s ambition in becoming the global semiconductor hub and nurture the chip design and manufacturing ecosystem”.

Earlier this week, minister for electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that “

“India is right there squarely on their global plans whether it is Intel, Global Foundaries” and India is in talks with some of the giants to attract them into the country.

The conference will see participation from global experts from industry, academia, and research institutions including names such as the founder of Indo-Us Venture Partners – Vinod Dham; Sanjay Mehrotra, President & CEO of Micron Technology; Randhir Thakur, President, Intel Foundry Services, Intel among others.

“The reasons for India to get into semiconductor is not because the rest of the world is doing it. For us it is a very reasoned expansion of the digital economy opportunities to include semiconductor,” said Chandrasekhar.

He also added that the chief of the India Semiconductor Mission will be announced soon who will be responsible for evaluating the applications which the government has received so far.

“For the last 22 years tech services has driven the digital economy. Now think about the next 25 years. And the next 25 years is going to be AI, data, internet, electronics and semiconductor. So in a sense, we are making the investments now what is going to be the future,” said Chandrasekhar.

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