M Shyam Sparsha
In a moment of quiet triumph that signals the beginning of a technological renaissance, Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, announced this week that India’s first indigenously designed semiconductor chip is ready—and 19 more are on the way. This is not just a routine update in policy or production. It’s a tectonic shift in India’s ambition to emerge as a global powerhouse in semiconductor design and manufacturing.
What makes this achievement even more significant is that the pioneering chip has been developed by a team of young researchers and engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad—an institution that is fast emerging as the nucleus of India’s electronics and VLSI design talent.
This isn’t merely a chip launch—it is a symbol of India’s entry into a highly elite club of semiconductor-producing nations. For a country that currently imports over 90% of its semiconductor needs, the announcement marks a crucial inflection point. The chip developed at IIT Hyderabad is a product of the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), launched under the aegis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s $10 billion semiconductor incentive scheme aimed at fostering self-reliance in electronics.
The chip, which is a part of a broader portfolio of 20 under development, has been fabricated in partnership with global foundries. This is a validation of India’s growing capabilities in Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) design, which for decades had remained the domain of the US, Taiwan, South Korea, and a handful of European nations.
The team at IIT Hyderabad’s Centre for VLSI and Nanoelectronics has delivered a working silicon chip that meets global design and performance standards. It is a fully functional microcontroller unit (MCU) targeted at embedded and IoT applications—a segment witnessing explosive global demand.
What’s truly commendable is that this chip was designed entirely on Indian soil—from architecture to simulation to verification. It is a product of academic excellence, government initiative, and industry mentorship, built with the singular goal of ending India’s over-dependence on imported semiconductors.
Minister Vaishnaw, while unveiling the development, also confirmed that 19 other chips are currently in various stages of fabrication and validation. These span multiple application areas: automotive electronics, mobile SoCs, industrial automation, telecom, and defence-grade secure microprocessors.
This move couldn’t have come at a more crucial time. The global semiconductor supply chain is currently concentrated in a handful of countries, particularly Taiwan, which produces over 60% of the world’s chips and over 90% of the most advanced nodes. This geographic concentration has already raised alarms across the world about economic and national security vulnerabilities.
India, which aspires to be a $5 trillion economy with a $1 trillion digital economy by 2030, cannot afford to be at the mercy of foreign fabs or chip exporters. Semiconductors are the backbone of every future-facing sector—from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence, from smart cities to digital healthcare.
The success of India’s chip design and the upcoming fab in Gujarat’s Dholera region—being built by the Tata Group in collaboration with Powerchip of Taiwan—signifies that India is not merely content with being a low-cost software hub. It is ready to take on complex, high-tech hardware production with long gestation periods and steep capital investments.
India’s push is multidimensional: design talent, fabrication units, skilled workforce development, supply chain infrastructure, and strong global partnerships. Over 30 semiconductor design startups have emerged in India in just the last two years, supported by schemes like the Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) and the Modified Programme for Semiconductors and Display Fabs.
By investing heavily in skilling and reskilling, institutions like IIT Hyderabad, IISc Bengaluru, and IIT Madras are aligning their academic curricula to the needs of future chip technologies—photonic ICs, compound semiconductors, quantum chips, and more.
Yes, it will take a few more years for India to become a net exporter of chips. But the foundation is now solidly in place. From ideation to innovation, from design to deployment, India is scripting a new story of technological self-sufficiency.
As Vaishnaw rightly put it, “This is India’s moment.” And it belongs not just to policymakers or corporates, but to the young minds in labs and classrooms across the country—like those at IIT Hyderabad—who are now daring to dream silicon dreams.
