The ChipIN Centre, operating under the Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme and the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme, has onboarded more than one lakh engineers from over 500 organisations across India — including 400 academic institutions and 100 startups — the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) announced on 22 September 2026. The milestone, disclosed at SEMICON India 2026 in New Delhi, signals a structural shift in India's ambition to build a homegrown semiconductor design ecosystem.

Scale of the Chip-Design Push

Engineers onboarded through the ChipIN Centre were given access to advanced chip-design tools, fabrication services, and specialised training curricula. Cumulatively, these institutions and startups have developed more than 300 chip designs submitted for fabrication at foundries both within India and abroad.

Tool usage has crossed four crore hours, a figure the IT Ministry describes as creating the largest centralised chip-design user base in the country's history. The scale is unprecedented for a programme that is still in its formative years.

What the C2S Programme and DLI Scheme Cover

The C2S Programme is specifically structured to build semiconductor design capability among students, researchers, and early-stage startups. Its long-term objective is to widen the pool of qualified chip designers and strengthen India's electronic system design capacity at scale.

The DLI Scheme, meanwhile, has backed domestic projects spanning a diverse range of applications — video surveillance, drone detection, energy meters, microprocessors, satellite communications, broadband systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. This breadth reflects the government's intent to embed indigenous chip design across critical and everyday infrastructure.

12 Semiconductor Projects Approved, 3 Already in Production

Under the broader Semicon India Programme, 12 semiconductor projects have received formal approval across six states, with total investment commitments exceeding ₹1.64 lakh crore. Notably, three facilities have already commenced commercial production — a tangible sign that India's semiconductor push has moved beyond policy into execution.

This comes amid intensifying global competition for semiconductor supply chain diversification, with the United States, European Union, Japan, and Taiwan all running parallel incentive programmes. India's timing is deliberate: geopolitical disruptions exposed the vulnerability of concentrating chip production in a single region.

SEMICON India 2026: Ecosystem, Not Just Fabs

The government used SEMICON India 2026 to emphasise that a competitive semiconductor sector demands far more than chip fabrication alone. The event brought together chip designers, foundries, packaging and testing facilities, equipment and materials suppliers, research institutions, startups, system companies, and workforce developers under one roof.

The emphasis, according to official statements, was on demonstrating capabilities already being built across the value chain — connecting indigenous innovation with global semiconductor market opportunities — rather than outlining aspirational targets alone.

What Comes Next

With three facilities operational and ₹1.64 lakh crore committed across 12 projects, the near-term focus will shift to ramping production yields and attracting global equipment suppliers to set up local operations. Analysts watching the sector note that design capability, while growing rapidly, must eventually connect to domestic fabrication at scale to reduce dependence on overseas foundries. The trajectory over the next two to three years will determine whether India graduates from a chip-design hub to a full-stack semiconductor nation.