India AI Impact Summit: First chip projects under semiconductor plan to begin production by month-end, says MeitY Secretary

S Krishnan emphasized that India is positioning itself as a green and scalable data centre hub capable of serving both domestic needs and global AI demand, with semiconductors and compute infrastructure forming central pillars of its technology strategy.

Secretary of the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), S Krishnan announced on Monday that the first of the 10 approved projects under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM 1.0) will begin commercial production by the end of February.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Krishnan highlighted that Micron will start production, initially focusing on high-bandwidth memory (HBM)—a critical component for advanced AI computing.

"Eventually, they would also be working on high-bandwidth memory, which is so important for AI," he added.

Krishnan noted that the next phase, India Semiconductor Mission 2.0—announced in the Union Budget on February 1—will further strengthen local manufacturing capabilities with continued government support.

He emphasized that India is positioning itself as a green and scalable data centre hub capable of serving both domestic needs and global AI demand, with semiconductors and compute infrastructure forming central pillars of its technology strategy.

Krishnan also mentioned that recent budget measures have clarified the tax treatment for overseas companies establishing AI cloud and data centre infrastructure in India for global operations. This step is designed to attract large-scale compute investments, he said.