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Why India’s Chip Dream Needs More Engineers Than Factories

For India, the next frontier in the semiconductor race is no longer simply attracting billion-dollar investments or persuading global companies to set up fabrication plants. It is finding enough people with the skills to design, manufacture and package the chips that those factories will produce.

That challenge has quietly become central to New Delhi’s semiconductor strategy. On Thursday, the government outlined a broad effort to expand the country’s talent pipeline, arguing that India’s ambitions to become a global semiconductor hub will depend as much on classrooms and laboratories as on clean rooms and production lines.

The numbers suggest the scale of the undertaking. Government-backed programmes have trained more than one lakh engineers, nearly 68,000 people have received specialised instruction in chip design, and 175 semiconductor designs have been successfully taped out at the Semiconductor Laboratory in Mohali. Together, they represent the early contours of an ecosystem that policymakers hope can sustain a domestic chip industry over the long term.

From announcements to execution

The strategy marks an evolution in India’s semiconductor policy. The initial phase of the Semicon India Programme focused on attracting investment into fabrication and packaging facilities. But as projects move from announcements to execution, officials increasingly view skilled manpower—not financial incentives—as the industry’s most pressing constraint.

At the centre of the effort is the Chips to Startup programme, which has opened access to sophisticated chip-design software for engineering institutions across the country. More than 240 lakh hours have been logged on these tools, exposing students to the same technologies used by global semiconductor companies and narrowing the gap between academic training and industrial practice.

The government is also trying to reshape engineering education itself. New semiconductor curricula introduced by the All India Council for Technical Education are intended to embed chip design and manufacturing into mainstream technical education, while specialised training centres are preparing engineers for disciplines ranging from VLSI design to embedded systems.

Manufacturing presents an even steeper challenge. Fabrication plants and advanced packaging facilities require technicians and process engineers with expertise that India has only recently begun to develop. To address that gap, new training infrastructure is being established, including a semiconductor assembly laboratory in Guwahati, while partnerships with industry leaders aim to produce tens of thousands of professionals in nanofabrication and process engineering over the coming decade.

The strategy extends beyond India’s borders. Collaborations with universities in the United States, including Purdue University and Arizona State University, are intended to strengthen research, academic exchanges and workforce development, reflecting the increasingly global nature of semiconductor innovation.

The renewed emphasis on talent comes alongside the Union Cabinet’s approval of Semicon 2.0, a ₹1.275 lakh crore programme that places research, innovation and workforce development alongside manufacturing incentives. The shift reflects a growing recognition that while factories can be financed and built, the expertise needed to operate them cannot be created overnight.

India’s semiconductor ambitions have often been measured by the number of fabrication plants it can attract. Increasingly, however, the more consequential measure may be whether it can produce the engineers, researchers and technicians capable of turning those investments into a globally competitive industry.

The details of the government’s talent strategy were provided by Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.