Building India’s Semiconductor Future: Talent, Infrastructure, and the Semicon 2.0 Roadmap

The Government of India is aggressively building a robust semiconductor talent pipeline under the Semicon India Programme and Semicon 2.0, targeting the entire value chain from chip design to assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP). Key initiatives like NIELIT Calicut’s SMART Lab and the Chips to Startup (C2S) program have already trained over 168,000 professionals, facilitated 175 chip tape-outs via SCL Mohali, and provided engineering colleges with over 24 million hours of EDA tool access. To align education with industry demands, the AICTE has also integrated specialized semiconductor curricula across technical institutions nationwide. To further scale these capabilities, India is expanding its training infrastructure and fostering high-impact domestic and international partnerships. Highlights include setting up a specialized ATMP training lab at NIELIT Guwahati, alongside a decade-long collaboration with Lam Research to train 60,000 engineering professionals in nanofabrication. Backed by strategic academic and industry ties with IBM, NASSCOM, Purdue, and Arizona State University, the Union Cabinet recently bolstered this vision by approving Semicon 2.0 with a ₹1.27 lakh crore ($13.56 billion) outlay—aiming to cement India’s position as a self-reliant, global semiconductor hub. $MOSCHIP $TATAELXSI $KAYNES