India will have 2-3 more semiconductor fabs: S Krishnan
Electronics & IT (MeitY) has been working aggressively on multiple areas, particularly, to boost domestic semiconductor industry, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly.
In an interaction with ET's Muntazir Abbas, MeitY secretary, S Krishnan, a 1989 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, who took over barely six months back, is at the helm of many prestigious initiatives, and in an exclusive interaction talks on semiconductor ecosystem, mobile components manufacturing, deepfakes menace, and implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023. Edited excerpts
Let’s begin with the government's semiconductor ambition. Now, you have biggies like Micron and Tata, so what's next, and how are you looking at design in India?
There are three distinct parts within the semiconductor ecosystem where one part is a design. There are many companies internationally who now don't run fabs of their own and simply do design. Large companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom and even AMD have become fabless companies. So, many of them are purely design companies.
In the design space, India has a lot of human resources. And a significant portion of the design work for semiconductor chips is done in India. Many of these large companies employ thousands of people in India. In addition, Indian startups and other companies do design as well but for larger companies, multinationals and others, selling it to them and don't develop it as a product of their own. So that is one area
