India's semiconductor opportunity has moved past the question of whether the country can attract fabs. The more consequential question, and the one that will determine whether this moment becomes a lasting industrial transformation, is whether India can build the human depth to make those fabs productive, innovative and globally competitive.
NITI Aayog's 2026 roadmap targets a $120–150 billion semiconductor value chain by 2035, spanning mature-node manufacturing, advanced packaging, compound semiconductors and design. That is an ambitious architecture. But infrastructure without people is just real estate. The workforce capable of running, improving and innovating within that ecosystem needs to be built in parallel, not treated as something that will follow once the investment arrives.
India enters this phase with a formidable base. The country accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the global semiconductor design workforce, while more than 1.5 million engineers graduate every year—one of the largest technical talent pools in the world. Yet despite this depth in design, India's semiconductor manufacturing remains at a nascent stage, with dependency on imports for over 90 per cent of domestic semiconductor needs. The real challenge is not quantity, it is preparation.
A semiconductor ecosystem needs far more than VLSI designers. It needs technicians trained in cleanroom protocols and equipment handling, process engineers focused on yield and statistical process control, specialists in metrology and materials, and professionals who understand advanced packaging and testing. From where we sit at Mitsubishi Electric India, the acute shortage of people who combine domain knowledge with manufacturing-floor fluency is something we encounter directly. The foundation for closing that gap has to be laid before students ever enter an engineering college.
According to UDISE+ 2024-25 data, only 51.7 per cent of government secondary schools are equipped with science laboratories, limiting opportunities for practical, inquiry-based learning in nearly half of all schools. In semiconductor manufacturing, where precision depends on an understanding of physics, chemistry and materials science, practical exposure cannot remain an optional extension of classroom learning. The habits of observation, measurement and disciplined problem-solving that advanced manufacturing demands are built early, or they are very difficult to retrofit later.
Progress is already visible at the college level. Under the Chips to Startup programme, over 68,000 students have been trained, and 175 chip designs have been successfully taped out by students.
Around one lakh individuals from 400 organisations, including 300 academic institutions and 95 startups, have used shared national EDA infrastructure, resulting in more than 175 lakh hours of tool usage. These are meaningful numbers. They are also the beginning of a much larger task.
The next priority is to widen that pipeline beyond engineering campuses, to build a genuine talent ladder, not another collection of courses. NITI Aayog's roadmap proposes a strategy built around five pillars: Pioneering, Policy and Investment, Production, People and Partnership, and within that, envisions National Fab Academies, semiconductor-focused programmes through ITIs and polytechnics, and mandatory apprenticeships with fabs and OSAT facilities. That model recognises what conventional engineering education consistently underestimates: semiconductor manufacturing is learned through repetition inside real production environments. The technician who understands contamination control, the engineer who can diagnose yield loss and the packaging specialist who can work with increasingly complex architectures all build expertise through sustained hands-on exposure, not through curriculum alone.
That ladder needs to connect every rung. School science should feed technical training; technical training should feed engineering; engineering should lead to apprenticeships, specialised research and industry roles. And the ladder itself will keep changing shape. AI, advanced packaging, chiplets, SiC and GaN will continually redefine what semiconductor-ready means, making continuous upskilling as important as the initial qualification. Naming people as a pillar is the right instinct. The harder question, and the one industry and government need to answer together, is what accountability for that pillar actually looks like in practice.
India has begun building the physical infrastructure for its semiconductor economy. That is cause for genuine optimism. But the next competitive advantage will not come from the fabs themselves; it will come from the talent ladder that determines whether those fabs can reach their potential. Building that ladder is not a supporting act to India's semiconductor ambition. It is the ambition.
Author is General Manger-HR Head, Mitsubishi Electric India
