New Delhi, August 14 (IANS). More than 68,000 students have been trained so far under the 'Chips to Startups' (C2S) program to strengthen India's semiconductor design ecosystem. This information was given by the government on Friday.
Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Jitin Prasad said in reply to a question in the Lok Sabha that the C2S program aims to produce 85,000 industry-ready professionals at B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD level with expertise in the field of semiconductor chip design.
Under the C2S program, 332 educational institutions across the country have been provided access to advanced electronic design automation (EDA) tools from companies such as Synopsis, Cadence, Siemens EDA, Ansys, Keysight, Silvaco, Renesas-Altium, AMD-Xilinx, AsterQuanta, CompCarta, Cadre and AMD-Xilinx.
The Union Minister said that the participating institutes have successfully 'tapped-out' 254 chip designs so far. Of these, 175 designs have been prepared at the 180nm technology node at SCL, Mohali and 79 designs have been prepared at semiconductor foundries located abroad.
Under the C2S program in Andhra Pradesh, 23 educational institutions have been provided access to advanced EDA tools with a total usage of more than 4.34 lakh tool hours.
Prasad further said that these projects are currently in various stages of design and development. These are expected to move towards prototype validation including tape-out in a semiconductor foundry.
Additionally, the Electronics Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) has strengthened India's export-oriented electronics manufacturing ecosystem.
The number of EHTP units has increased to 79 and their exports exceeded Rs 11,100 crore in the financial year 2025-26.
EHTP Scheme is a 100 per cent export-oriented scheme to promote exports of electronic hardware from India. STPI provides statutory services through a single-window clearance system under the EHTP scheme. The government informed that no funds are allocated under the EHTP scheme.
The incentives and financial benefits available to eligible EHTP units are determined under the provisions of the 'Foreign Trade Policy 2023'.
–IANS
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