At SEMICON India 2026, Ashwini Vaishnaw said the second phase of India's chip programme aims for 200 chip design startups and 1 lakh trained technicians.

What the minister announced

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister for Electronics and IT, set out the plan at the opening session of SEMICON India 2026 in New Delhi on 17 Sep 2026. Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the event. Its theme was "Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem", and Vaishnaw said people from more than 28 countries took part.

Semicon 2.0 is the second phase of India's chip programme. Its outlay of Rs 1,27,500 crore compares with Rs 76,000 crore for the first phase, which the government approved in December 2021. "This time our ambition is much bigger," Vaishnaw said, according to Business Today.

The six parts of the plan

Vaishnaw called the plan six pillars. Chip design comes first, with a goal of at least 200 startups and companies designing chips in India. The second covers machines and materials: capital equipment, maintenance, chemicals and gases. The third adds more fabs for display, memory, silicon, compound and logic chips. The fourth scales up advanced packaging, building on a 3D packaging plant under construction in Odisha.

The fifth is applied research led by industry with colleges, and Vaishnaw invited companies to suggest projects. The sixth is talent: the government will aim to train 1 lakh technicians, cleanroom staff and factory-floor workers for the new chip plants.

What the first phase delivered

Business Today reports that 12 chip manufacturing units were approved under the first phase, with total investment of over Rs 1.64 lakh crore. More than 105 startups tried chip design, and about 20 of them raised around Rs 800 crore from venture capital investors. India trained 70,000 chip design engineers in four years, against a 10-year target of 85,000.

More than 400 universities now have chip design (EDA) software from Cadence, Siemens and Synopsys. Chips designed by students are made at the Semiconductor Laboratory in Mohali.

What happens next

YourStory reports that Semicon 2.0 adds a co-investment model for chip startups. Amitesh Kumar Sinha, CEO of the India Semiconductor Mission, told YourStory that the government plans to match venture capital money in approved startups rupee for rupee, on the same terms. Neither report gives a deadline for the 200-startup or 1 lakh worker targets.