Davos 2023: India to be large telecom equipment exporter in next 3 years, says Ashwini Vaishnaw

India will become a leader in the manufacturing and exporting of telecom gear, semiconductors, and train sets, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said during a panel discussion titled “Building India’s Digital Economy: Tech Powered Governance” at the World Economic Forum 2023 in Davos. The minister said that India is on its to becoming a major electronics manufacturing hub, driven by the maximum production of telecom equipment.

During the discussion, Vaishnaw said India will become a large telecom equipment exporter in the next three years. Reliance Jio and Airtel have claimed that the network gears for their 5G networks have been indigenously manufactured. The anti-China sentiment gave momentum to the manufacturing sector in India.

India is also expected to begin manufacturing semiconductors very soon, supported by university tie-ups and a competitive talent pool of 52,000 engineers. The minister said the government is hoping to start the production of legacy nodes and cutting-edge semiconductor nodes, along with the manufacturing of System-on-Chip (SoC) semiconductors, which are complex circuits that integrate different processors and transistors into a single chip.

The Indian government’s semiconductor ambitions are backed by an investment of $10 billion as the first chunk of the funding, Vaishnaw highlighted during the discussion. Since the higher nodes of semiconductors are used in complex devices such as electric vehicles, train sets, telecom equipment, as well as machines used in power sectors, the government has implemented the feedback to improve the plan for semiconductor manufacturing.

The new semiconductor manufacturing facilities will be run using green tech, Vaishnaw said. “We in India are very clear that whatever new fabs we set up will be served with green energy and serviced by green energy,” he said.

Vaishnaw also emphasised increasing the talent pool in India. “Educational institutions have partnered us and changed the course curriculum for generating semiconductor talent in India,” he said. The curriculum will be updated with courses to train aspirational engineers for the semiconductor production industry. The government is planning to train as many as 85,000 engineers over the next 10 years, Vaishnaw said at the World Economic Forum.