Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar: ‘To build chip ecosystem, China took 30 years, but still unsuccessful. We are trusted, resilient…’

Chandrasekhar was in conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, Indian Express Group, and Anil Sasi, National Business Editor, The Indian Express.

Chandrasekhar was a guest at Express Adda in Mumbai

To a question on the recent decision of the Goods and Services Tax Council to impose 28 per cent tax on online gaming, Chandrasekhar said once the IT Ministry puts together the framework for permissible online games, it will approach the Council to reconsider their decision on levying the tax on the full face value of the bets placed on such platforms.

He said there have been some “bad actors” in the gaming space whose actions have conditioned the view that various states took in the GST Council. However, he pointed out that depending on how the tax finally gets interpreted, there is a chance that “smaller start-ups could quickly die and that is certainly not what our policy objective is”.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology in conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Editor, The Indian Express Group and Anil Sasi National Business Editor at The Indian Express Adda in Mumbai on Wednesday evening. (Express photo by Pradip Das)

He said the break-up of the Vedanta and Foxconn joint venture to set up a fab in India is “not a blow to India’s semiconductor ambitions,” since there will now be two proposals instead of one. In December 2021, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) had announced a $10 billion semiconductor manufacturing plan.

“Both Vedanta and Foxconn have said they will send proposals to set up fabs in India, so we will have two proposals when earlier there was only one proposal. I don’t think it is a blow, this is actually a good thing for the country where both the partners want to pursue their chip strategy independently,” he said.

Highlighting the complexity of putting together a viable chip ecosystem, Chandrasekhar said, “The Prime Minister’s vision is to create a successful chip ecosystem in India in the next ten years. Countries like China took 30 years to do that and they are still unsuccessful despite having spent $200 billion on their ambitions… We are a trusted partner to the world, we are resilient, and we represent domestic demand in our own ambitions of digitalisation.”

Chandrasekhar also said the government is trying to build the entire ecosystem around semiconductors, which includes start-ups that can design the next-generation chips.

“The way technology performance is being built, it is no longer a unipolar approach towards the next generation of performance. Design innovation is also creating performance enhancement, system design is also adding to it, packaging is also an important part going forward, as well as fabs and the latest nodes,” he said.

“Look at Nvidia which is a fabless company, but they have intellectual property for the next generation of GPUs. So, because the world is now creating a space for design led performance, it is the right time for India to be a player in the semiconductor space. Outside of North America, we have the largest pool of semiconductor talent, close to 100,000 engineers are working for the global majors. If they can start developing next generation devices, that is what we want from them,” he said.

People gathered listen to Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s interaction with Anant Goenka, Executive Editor, The Indian Express Group and Anil Sasi National Business Editor at The Indian Express Adda in Mumbai on Wednesday evening. (Express photo by Pradip Das)

The Minister said that the government is funding start-ups in the design space through grants and equity, and is also encouraging the big companies to also partner with Indian start-ups so that India can have co-owned intellectual property and devices in the short term.

He also said the instances of corporate misgovernance at some Indian start-ups is something that concerns the government. “The Indian start-up ecosystem is being observed by the whole world… for us it is an asset that has to be protected, nurtured and expanded. So, any news on the fringes that has to do with corporate governance issues at some of these companies is certainly something we are not happy with,” the Minister said.

“I have, on my own, met with investors who had funded some of these companies that ran afoul, and told them that investors have a very important responsibility in mentoring young founders… As much as innovation is important, integrity is important as well… There are some investors who have created this culture of shortcuts,” he added.

Chandrasekhar said the regulatory objectives of the Telecom Ministry and the IT Ministry, both of which want to regulate services like WhatsApp, will eventually be harmonised, and MeitY is talking to the Telecom Ministry about it. “We are in discussion with the Telecom Ministry. In keeping with the PM’s view, it should be simple for our start-ups, we should not make compliance difficult for them and the technology economy in general… we don’t want silos,” he said.

As part of the pre-draft consultation on the Digital India Bill, Chandrasekhar has said that the IT Ministry is looking to rework safe harbour norms, which give social media companies legal immunity from user-generated content.

Elaborating on this, he said, “If there is a dispute between a platform and a user, by giving legal immunity to the former, you are dragging the government into it to adjudicate the matter. But, when the government adjudicates it, then the pro-free speech crowd comes up and says the government should not do it… Therefore, I have started this discourse that under the Digital India Bill, we give safe harbour as the exception and not the norm.”

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