Skilling will always remain the core of ‘Atmanirbhar
Bharat’. The global semiconductor industry is facing a
significant skills gap, with an estimated 10,000 open
positions in USA alone. The same report also states that
the industry will require more than one million skilled
professionals by 2025 to keep up with the growing
demand for semiconductors. As per a report by the India
Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), India is home to over
200 semiconductor design and embedded software
companies and therefore it is an opportunity, presenting
itself. As the country's demand for semiconductors
continues to grow at a rapid pace, meeting this demand
can be a challenge and thereby a dire need to increase its
pool of skilled manpower to support the industry.
Semiconductors are the thumbnail-sized building blocks of almost every modern electronic
device from smartphones to connected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT). It contains
millions of transistors packed onto a few millimeters of silicon (the semiconductor).
Semiconductors allow electronics to function and operate, as well as make computations.
That makes them vital for modern electronics. Semiconductors are highly complex products
to design and manufacture. They require high level of investment in both R&D and capital
expenditure. India’s potential: India’s consumption of semiconductors is expected to cross
$80 billion by 2026 and is expected to reach $110 billion by 2030. The global semiconductor
industry: The global semiconductor industry is currently valued at $500-$600 billion and
caters to the global electronics industry currently valued at about $3 trillion.
India’s semiconductor journey started with Punjab in 1974 when the Department of
Electronics realized that the country needed to build capacity in semiconductors design and
fabrication. Mohali got India’s first semiconductor fab in 1978, which started manufacturing
chips with technology obtained from American Microsystems Inc. Around this same time,
semiconductor design activity began in India and within a decades time, 17 out of 25 top
semiconductor design firms, including Intel, had opened centers in the country. However,
the country lagged over the years due to sub-par investments in a highly technology
intensive and fast-paced industry.