The Government has approved the ‘Semicon India Programme’ with a total outlay of Rs 76,000 crore for the development of a semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in the country.
As part of this, the ‘Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme’ has been approved with an outlay of Rs 1,000 crore to support domestic companies, startups, and MSMEs in semiconductor design.
Designing and commercializing a semiconductor product involves high entry barriers, long development timelines, and global competition. To address these challenges, the DLI Scheme provides for the following:
- Design infrastructure support, such as Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and Intellectual Property (IP) cores, to help with early prototyping of designs
- Financial incentive of up to 50% of eligible costs, capped at ₹15 cr/application, for design prototyping, scaling-up, and volume production
- Incentives of 6% to 4% of net sales turnover over five years, capped at ₹30 cr/application, for deployment & commercialization of chip solutions
Under DLI, since its launch in December 2021:
- 278 academic institutions (C2S) and 72 startups (DLI) have been approved for access to state-of-the-art Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools
- 23 firms & startups are sanctioned financial support for designing chips for surveillance camera, energy meter, microprocessor IPs, networking applications etc.
- Out of these, ten (10) companies have raised venture capital (VC) funding for scaling up their design prototypes for commercialization
- Six (6) companies have completed prototype tape-outs at various semiconductor foundries
Recently, 20 chip designs from 17 academic institutions have been successfully fabricated by SCL, Mohali.
A total project outlay of Rs 803.08 crore, including the cost of EDA tools, has been approved under the DLI Scheme. These projects are at various stages of semiconductor design and development. The release of funds under the scheme are linked with the achievement of defined milestones, including the deployment of chips.
The DLI Scheme is implemented in close consultation with stakeholders and beneficiary companies. Any modifications needed will be done based on evolving requirements and feedback.
