200 startups, 1 lakh technicians, $12 billion investment: Vaishnaw lays out Semicon 2.0 roadmap

Semicon 2.0 is built around six pillars: chip design, machines and materials, fabs, advanced packaging, research and development, and talent.

New Delhi: The government has received investment commitments of $11–12 billion under Semicon 2.0, the second phase of India’s semiconductor programme, Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. The investments are expected to come in over the next two to three years, he added.

Speaking at a press briefing on the sidelines of Semicon India 2026, Vaishnaw said the commitments—“of the order of Rs 1 lakh crore”—covered semiconductor equipment, materials, gases, chemicals, ATMP units, substrates and, in one case, wafers.

He declined to name the companies. “Many of them don’t want us to take the names, so we won’t take the names. They will announce the investments as their boards and their shareholders” decide, he said.

The commitments came alongside a $5 billion investment pledge from Applied Materials, announced earlier in the day. The US equipment maker said the investment, to be spread over a decade under its “India Vision 2035” plan, would support research, supply-chain expansion and workforce development. This includes a new advanced research park and a tenfold increase in its India-based supply-chain capacity.

Semicon 2.0 was approved by the Union Cabinet in July with an outlay of Rs 1,27,500 crore. It is built around six pillars: chip design, machines and materials, fabs, advanced packaging, research and development, and talent.

The first phase, approved in December 2021 with an outlay of Rs 76,000 crore, cleared 12 projects with a cumulative investment of over Rs 1.64 lakh crore. Three have begun commercial production.