Union minister for electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday said that three more semiconductor plants under the Semicon Mission 1.0 will be operational by the end of 2026.
Vaishnaw’s announcement comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the US-based Micron’s Assembly, Test, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) facility in Sanand, Gujarat.
Of the 10 plants approved under Semicon 1.0, the first is now producing memory chips, with three others set to follow before the year ends.
“The promise he (PM Modi) made to the country that the semiconductor industry has to be brought to India, he fulfilled that promise. This is the first step. Very soon, the second plant will also go into commercial production, and after that, two more plants will go into production this year. In other words, four of the ten plants that have been approved will be inaugurated in 2026,” Vaishnaw said at the inauguration of the Gujarat Semiconnect Conference 2026 in Gandhinagar.
The minister said artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and electronics manufacturing would drive India’s next growth phase. “Today we are standing at a point where India has moved from learning to walk to learning to run in the global technology race,” he said.
With the launch of the Micron plant, India has secured a special place on the global semiconductor map, the minister said. After the success under Semicon 1.0, he said, the government is set to launch the second phase of the mission, whose primary objective is to make India a global hub not just for manufacturing, but for design, machinery, and talent.
The top priority for Semicon 2.0 will be to create a design ecosystem so that deep-tech startups can develop the next Qualcomm, Broadcom, or Nvidia, he said.
He said there was a need for a full semiconductor value chain in India. “It is vital to have a material, machine, equipment, testing and validation ecosystem well established in the country for the foundation of the 20-year journey to be very strong,” he said, underlining that there was a global talent gap in the semiconductor industry that India can help meet.
“A worldwide shortage of 2 million specialists is expected, and India will fill that gap. The country achieved the target of training 85,000 engineers in just four years, originally set for ten years. Currently, students at 315 universities are designing real chips. This network will be expanded to 500 universities, ensuring youth from every state can find employment in this high-tech sector,” he said.
The minister also said that investment commitments of $250 billion at the infrastructure level and $17 billion in deep-tech VC funding have been made. By guaranteeing tax incentives until 2047, the government has provided policy stability, and India’s IT industry would consequently move beyond software services to lead the world in AI-based services.
Gujarat, with its surplus power and clean energy, has a strong opportunity to establish data centres that would help position India as a global data hub, he added.
He said the electronics manufacturing sector has grown from ₹2 lakh crore to ₹12 lakh crore over the past ten years and employs 2.5 million people.
In his address, chief minister Bhupendra Patel said Gujarat was a fast mover in the semiconductor and chip manufacturing sector — driven by policy stability, transparency, ease of doing business, and political will.
