India’s Semiconductor Talent Push Advances As 46 Institutions Complete 122 Chip Submissions Via Six Shared Wafer Runs At SCL Mohali

India’s push to build an indigenous semiconductor design ecosystem through academia is beginning to show measurable outcomes, with 46 academic institutions submitting 122 chip designs that have progressed through six shared wafer fabrication runs under the government’s Chips to Start-up (C2S) Programme.

The fabrication runs were enabled through the ChipIN Centre at C-DAC Bengaluru, which aggregates student-designed chips from participating institutions and sends them for fabrication to the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali, using 180 nanometre process technology.

The shared wafer model allows multiple designs to be fabricated simultaneously, significantly lowering costs and enabling large-scale academic participation.

So far, 56 student-designed chips have been successfully fabricated, packaged, and delivered back to institutions, allowing students and researchers to validate their designs on silicon rather than limiting learning to simulations alone.

This hands-on exposure covers the full cycle—from design submission and verification to fabrication, packaging, and post-silicon testing.

This academic push comes at a time when the global semiconductor industry is facing an acute talent shortage, with industry estimates indicating a requirement for over 1 million additional skilled semiconductor professionals by 2030–2032.

As advanced electronics, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructure expand worldwide, the gap between available talent and industry demand is widening across major semiconductor regions.

Against this global backdrop, India’s academic chip design pipeline is emerging as a strategic lever.

Under the C2S Programme, around 1 lakh individuals across 400 organisations have accessed shared national Electronic Design Automation infrastructure, resulting in over 175 lakh hours of EDA tool usage.

These organisations include 300 academic institutions and 95 startups, reflecting a growing convergence between education, research, and early-stage semiconductor enterprises.

Beyond fabrication milestones, participating institutions have collectively filed over 75 patents and are currently developing more than 500 intellectual property cores, ASICs, and system-on-chip designs.

These designs are being oriented towards practical applications in defence, telecommunications, automotive systems, consumer electronics, and industrial equipment, sectors that are also driving global demand for chip designers.

The ChipIN Centre has played a critical operational role as academic participation scales up, addressing 4,855 technical support requests from students and faculty, while 265 plus industry-led training sessions have been conducted to strengthen practical skills in advanced chip design domains.

Launched in 2022 with a total outlay of Rs 250 crore over five years, the C2S Programme aims to develop 85,000 industry-ready semiconductor professionals while also catalysing 25 startups and enabling 10 technology transfers.

While this number represents only a fraction of the projected global talent shortfall, it is being seen as a foundational step in positioning India as a long-term contributor to the global semiconductor workforce.

As the global semiconductor market moves toward an estimated $1 trillion valuation by 2030, India’s strategy is increasingly centred on building talent and design capability at scale.

With academic institutions now moving beyond classroom instruction to delivering fabricated silicon, India’s semiconductor roadmap is being shaped not just by manufacturing incentives, but by a growing base of engineers trained to design, tape out, and test real chips.

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