The India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), India’s leading industry association for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM), concluded its 4-day long summit yesterday. The ESDM conference’s theme for the year was – ‘India’s Accelerated ESDM Growth: The Defining Decade’. The event successfully highlighted the growth of the electronics and semiconductor industry over the last few years. It also witnessed the launch of the IESA Western India chapter with an extended invitation to the leading companies, policymakers, and industry experts to join hands in the vision of bringing global recognition to the country.
The first day kick-started with the keynote by Shri. Saurabh Gaur, IAS, Joint Secretary, MeitY, while the conference witnessed industry veterans such as Sanjay Mehrotra, President & CEO, Micron Technology, Mr Erez Imberman, VP – Business Development & Special Projects, Tower Semiconductor, Dr Ashwini K Aggarwal, Director – Govt. Relations, Applied Materials India, Mr Rangesh Raghavan, Corporate Vice President and GM India, Lam Research, Dr Ajai Chowdhry, Founder – HCL, Chairman – EPIC Foundation, Mr Jeet Vijay CEO of MeitY Startup Hub (MSH), and Mr Suket Singhal, Group CEO, Secure Meters Ltd., were a few amongst others.
The highlight of the event was the keynote address by Honourable Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance Minister, Govt. of India, said, “I would like to highlight that electronic manufacturing has become the backbone of India’s Make in India initiative, announced by PM Modi in 2014-15. Since then, we have witnessed rapid growth in the electronics industry. The national policy of electronics introduced in 2019 has a vision to position India as the global hub of electronic system design and manufacturing. With over 330 incubators and accelerators, 50,000 start-ups, with a USD 95 billion valuations, these are the right kind of fertile ground for the electronics manufacturing industry. We hope that by the year 2025, India’s digital economy will touch 1 trillion USD that will play a big role in the making of $5 trillion economies by creating employment for over 10 lakh people. The ESDM sector holds a very big promise for India’s economic revival post the pandemic. I believe, IESA Vision Summit 2021 will contribute to India’s lookout for a quick and sustained recovery and help technologically qualified people in foreseeing India’s electronics manufacturing across the country.”
Commenting on the side-lines of the event, K Krishna Moorthy, CEO & President, IESA, said, “IESA is convinced about the impressive future of India’s semiconductor space. It is our constant endeavour to support the ecosystem – start-ups, MSME’s or student innovators. Vision Summit this year will focus on solutions and thought leadership that has the potential to directly impact lives across metros, tier-II cities, small towns, and our villages. We are hopeful that the benefits will be multi-prolonged; and more importantly, have ‘economic impact’ that ESDM promises to the country’s exchequer.”
Rajeev Khushu, Chairman of IESA, and Director of Corporate Affairs & Government Relations, Texas Instruments added, “One of the goals at IESA is to increase India’s inference and footprint into the global semiconductor supply chain. For this, the Vision Summit is a step to create a robust strategy to develop the country as a key player with a focus on the following elements: equipment and components needed for building a semiconductor manufacturing fab, materials – which include minerals, chemicals, and gases, and services and skills required for fab and ATMP (Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging).
India as a country has come a long way and the pandemic has proved to be a fuel to the rapid transformation and birth of several innovative ESDM and semiconductor start-ups. The Government of India and various state governments apprised on their initiatives to support the development and encourage skilled talent to excel in this industry.
