India Semiconductor Mission

India Semiconductor Mission

Part of: GS-Prelims and GS-III: Indian Economy & its challenges

Context: Government is focused on its important objective of building the overall semiconductor ecosystem and ensure that, it in-turn catalyses India’s rapidly expanding electronics manufacturing and innovation ecosystem.

• A total outlay of INR 76,000 crore for the development of semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in our country has been approved. 
• The programme aims to provide financial support to companies investing in semiconductors, display manufacturing and design ecosystem. This will serve to pave the way for India’s growing presence in the global electronics value chains.

India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) has been setup to formulate and drive India’s long term strategies for developing semiconductors and display manufacturing facilities and semiconductor design ecosystem.

• Will enable a multi-fold growth of Indian semiconductor design industry by providing requisite support in the form of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, foundry services and other suitable mechanisms for early-stage startups. 
• It will also promote and facilitate indigenous Intellectual Property (IP) generation and encourage, enable and incentivize Transfer of Technologies (ToT). 
• ISM will also enable collaborations and partnership programs with national and international agencies, industries and institutions for catalyzing collaborative research, commercialization and skill development.

Significance of the Sector

• Semiconductor chips are integral parts of the power train, chassis, safety systems, advanced driver assistance systems, and other parts of automobiles. 
• They are used more in passenger vehicles compared to commercial vehicles or two-wheelers
• The move to electric vehicles has led to increased demand of chips. For example, a Ford Focus typically uses roughly 300 chips, whereas one of Ford’s new electric vehicles can have up to 3,000 chips
• With supply of semiconductor chips slowing down, the production in automobile sector is also adversely impacted.

News Source: PIB