Over 1 lakh engineers onboarded by ChipIN Centre for India’s semiconductor push

More than one lakh engineers from over 500 organisations have been onboarded by the ChipIN Centre under the C2S Programme and DLI Scheme. The initiative has supported over 300 chip designs and more than four crore hours of tool usage.

New Delhi: More than one lakh engineers from over 500 organisations across the country, including 400 academic institutions and 100 startups, have been onboarded by the ChipIN Centre under the C2S Programme and DLI Scheme, the government said on Tuesday.

They were provided access to advanced chip-design tools, chip-design and fabrication services, and specialised training.

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Together, these institutions and start-ups have developed more than 300 chip designs for fabrication at foundries in India and abroad and have recorded over four crore hours of chip-design tool usage.

This unprecedented scale has helped create the largest centralised chip-design user base at the ChipIN Centre, said the IT Ministry.

The Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme is also supporting the development of semiconductor design capabilities among students, researchers, institutions, and startups.

The programme is aimed at creating a larger pool of skilled chip designers and strengthening the country’s electronic system design capabilities.

The Government’s Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme has supported domestic chip-design projects across areas including video surveillance, drone detection, energy meters, microprocessors, satellite communications, broadband and IoT SoCs.

Under the Semicon India Programme, 12 semiconductor projects have been approved across six states, with investment commitments exceeding Rs 1.64 lakh crore. Three facilities have already commenced commercial production.

At the ‘SEMICON India 2026’, the emphasis was, therefore, not only on what India aims to build, but also on capabilities that are already being developed across design, manufacturing, packaging and related technologies, said the government.

The semiconductor ecosystem requires much more than the fabrication of individual chips. It brings together chip designers, fabs, packaging and testing facilities, equipment and materials suppliers, research institutions, start-ups, system companies, and a skilled workforce.

SEMICON India 2026 brought these different elements together, offering a view of an ecosystem developing across the value chain and connecting indigenous innovation with global semiconductor opportunities.