India Aims for Semiconductor Design Startups by 2024

According to Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India is securing its position in the future of global supply and value chains with the announcement of a semiconductor fab soon and the first packaging facility in the works, as well as the potential launch of 100 design startups by 2024.

India is now on track to have 100 semiconductor design startups by 2024, up from near-zero levels just one and a half years ago. He claimed that right now, up to 27–30 design and semiconductor start-ups are “doing very good work”.

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The Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Chandrasekhar, stated that India’s position in the future of technology, the global supply and value chain, as well as the innovation ecosystem, “is firmly established” by citing multinational corporations like Apple, Cisco, and Samsung that have increased their commitment here.

The Minister stated that India is becoming a significant and important component of global value chains and emphasized how supportive policies, the ₹76,000 crore incentive program for chip manufacturing, a large talent pool, and skilling programs are enhancing the country’s advantages and highlighting India’s rise as a semiconductor power.

The second semiconductor investment this year was disclosed by Sequoia Capital India at the same time. Sequoia Capital India provided $3 million in a seed funding round to InCore Semiconductors, which is an Indian company producing RISC-V processor cores. The “SemiCon India FutureDesign Roadshow” is where the investment was revealed.

Sequoia Capital India has made a second investment in semiconductors so far this year. The business earlier this year also made an investment in Mindgrove, an IIT Madras-incubated semiconductor start-up that creates cutting-edge Systems on Chips (SoCs) for the rest of the world. Whiteboard Capital and Speciale Invest were additional investors in this round, according to a statement from Sequoia.

To encourage the development of next-generation semiconductor designers and to spread the culture of co-creation and shared IP ownership with active industry participation, the IT Ministry is organizing a number of roadshows across the nation. The first roadshow for the series took place in Gandhinagar’s Karnavati University in October 2022, and the second one was held in Bangalore, India, at IISc in February 2023. The India Semiconductor Mission was launched by the Centre in December 2021 with an incentive spend of ₹76,000 crores to draw investments to the industry.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar recently claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi allocated ₹1,200 crores to invest in Indian start-ups creating semiconductors. The funding requests for 23 startups were approved. Furthermore, he stated that the government is concentrating on assisting deep-tech startups in semiconductors and artificial intelligence.