India has been trying to break into the semiconductor industry since 1962 and have been successful only now, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told NDTV today.
"This is something that our country was trying since 1962. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru tried, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tried, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi tried, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh tried. Finally, we got success during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tenure," he told NDTV's Shiv Aroor in an exclusive interview.
Complex chips for commercial purposes will be manufactured at two facilities in India. A third will begin production in July, and a fourth by December, he said.
Asked about the advantages India enjoys in this field, the minister said it is the ability for design. This, he said, was what drew the big tech firms to India.
Currently, the most advanced chips are designed in India. Building upon that, we decided to put the talent pipeline in a very interesting way, the minister said.
Earlier, "a lot of design work was happening in our country... but not at the back office... We requested the semiconductor majors to start doing end-to-end product design and look at the most advanced chip design in India," he added.
The list, he said, includes NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ARM, AMD -- "practically each one of them".
India, he said, is already in the process of commercialising these ventures.
"The design tools like Synopsys and Cadmium which are used in industry by the big majors and real practical work, those we provided to about 300-plus colleges and universities and the result is phenomenal," he said.
Asked about the involvement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vaishnaw said he is "deeply involved".
"He continuously monitors it, continuously looks at the progress. And his guidance has been a long-term time frame," he added.
