Bengaluru, Feb 7 (PTI) India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 will prioritise indigenous chip design, their productisation, attracting ecosystem partners and development of talent, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday.
The minister said the government will continue to work on setting semiconductor manufacturing plants and target to produce chips as small as 2 nanometer node size.
“In Semicon 2.0, the top-most priority will be design companies. Design companies, design startups that can design a product, take it to the market, become the next Qualcomm from India, hopefully get that huge innovation, that entire energy which is there in our startups into deep tech. That will be a focus area,” Vaishnaw said.
He was speaking at a Qualcomm event here to announce a 2-nanometer chip of the company, which has been developed in India.
The government has allocated Rs 1,000 crore for ISM 2.0 for FY 2026-27 with emphasis on industry-led research and training centres to drive technology development and create a future-ready skilled workforce.
The minister said the government’s focus will be on getting the entire ecosystem in the country under ISM 2.0.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in the budget for the next fiscal, has announced that the government will come out with a second edition of the India Semiconductor Mission.
Vaishnaw said the government will look to engage equipment manufacturers, chemical manufacturers, gas manufacturers, and those who improve yield.
“The third focus will be talent. We have been able to create that talent pipeline. The base is very wide now,” Vaishnaw said.
The minister said that the government has set the target of creating 85,000 semiconductor-trained talent over a period of 10 years, but within four years, a pool of 67,000 semiconductor-trained engineers has been created.
He said that now 315 universities and colleges have been given EDA tools — systems to design chips. The minister said students are designing chips, taking them out at the semiconductor lab in Mohali and getting the product validated.
Talking about the 2-nanometer tape-out of the Qualcomm chip co-developed with the help of Qualcomm’s India team, Vaishnaw said it was a thing of the past when most of the back office development work was being done in India.
“Now, the entire right from customer product definition to designing the final silicon, getting it taped out and getting it validated, that entire thing is being done in India. So, this is a major development for our country, for our industry,” Vaishnaw said.
Qualcomm India President Savi Soin said that a lot of IP (intellectual property) gets developed globally that goes into the company’s chip.
“We look at where the best talent that we have. We have central bases, like we talked about, Chennai is all about wireless. A lot of stuff happens around the globe, but a lot of work is done also here (India),” he said.
Qualcomm, in a statement, said that successful 2nm tape-out highlights India’s expanding role in shaping global semiconductor innovation.
“Qualcomm Technologies engineering teams in India contribute across design implementation, validation, AI optimisation, system integration, support optimising architecture and platforms defined by Qualcomm’s global teams, that power platforms and products used by billions of people worldwide,” the statement said.
Earlier in the day, Vaishnaw inaugurated a product research and development (R&D) centre of semiconductor major Texas Instruments (TI) here. Spread over 5.5 lakh square feet, the facility is the company’s third in the country and is dedicated to developing world-class chip designs.
The centre houses an end-to-end reliability lab equipped with advanced testing capabilities for various environmental conditions, along with many other integrated circuit design labs.
TI claimed it was the first multinational company to set up an R&D centre in India in 1985. PTI PRS RHL
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