India: A Fab-less Wonder: Case of SMDP

From IPod to I Pad, millions of electronics goods have rolled out of China, the global manufacturing hub. India’s share of global electronic product market is less than 3%. Taiwan had $72 billion of investment in Fabs, where as India stands out as one the aspiring nation with no Fab. Yet, top 25 global semiconductor companies now have a presence in India through their captive centers, working in cutting edge technology nodes. Among the top twenty U.S. semiconductor companies, only two have not established a design center in India. While, Government of India is not successful in attracting manufacturing, appear to have made a significant contribution by focusing on talent supply. Department of Information Technology (DIT) implemented Special Manpower Development Programme in the area of VLSI design and related software (SMDP) and trained over 20,000 engineers. This paper is about SMDP as case study and is based on Impact Assessment of SMDP-II assigned by DIT on IIMA.