Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said India was building the entire electronics value chain from products and components to semiconductors as the roadmap to a ‘Viksit Bharat’. He inaugurated CG Semiconductor’s outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) facility in Sanand and said the plant will produce 20 crore (200 million) chips annually.“India’s youth will power the AI, robotics and next-generation technology revolution with Made-in-India chips,” Modi said. “The Sanand facility will produce 20 crore chips annually and has set a target of scaling up production to 500 crore chips a year. Commercial production of chip packaging is commencing at the country’s third semiconductor plant,” he said.He said the Semicon India programme was gathering momentum “step by step, brick by brick and chip by chip”.As part of the inaugural ceremony, CG Semi’s first commercial shipment from the Sanand OSAT facility has been dispatched to global customers of its Japanese technology partner, Renesas.CG Power Chairman Vellayan Subbiah said more than 75 specialists from the Philippines, South Korea, the US and Malaysia worked alongside Indian engineers to establish the facility and meet Renesas’ global qualification standards. He said India should strengthen advanced manufacturing capabilities to create jobs amid the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence.Calling the project a partnership between companies from India, Japan and Thailand, PM Modi said, “It represented technology, trust and partnership” and would accelerate India’s semiconductor ambitions.Modi said that “no global industrial powerhouse was built on a single factory alone.”“Industrial powerhouses are built around clusters. Places like America’s Silicon Valley, Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park, and Japan’s Silicon Island demonstrate the importance of such clusters”, he said, adding that Sanand is now moving in that very direction.“Within just a few months, Micron and CG Semi have commenced production here. This means a semiconductor cluster is taking shape in the country,” he added.Modi said India’s semiconductor push was the next phase of its electronics manufacturing expansion. He said mobile phone production had increased 33-fold since 2014, while electronics production had grown nearly seven times and exports around elevenfold.“One industry gives birth to hundreds of others. Those industries create lakhs of jobs and transform the economy of an entire region,” he said, adding that semiconductor clusters were also emerging in other parts of the country.“Our aim is to develop the entire ecosystem, from chip design to fabrication and packaging, right here in India,” the PM added.Highlighting employment opportunities, the PM said the semiconductor and artificial intelligence sectors would create jobs across research, design, innovation and supply chains. He also lauded women technicians trained at industrial training institutes (ITIs), including those who underwent semiconductor training in Malaysia before joining the Sanand facility.Modi said three semiconductor projects had commenced production within six months and reiterated that India offered policy stability, decision-making clarity and speedy execution for global investors.Taking a jibe at the previous UPA government, the PM said the inauguration fulfilled a vision he had conceived more than two decades ago when he was Gujarat chief minister. He said he had identified 300-400 acres near Gandhinagar for a semiconductor project and held discussions with companies, but the proposal did not move forward under the then Union government.
