New Delhi: Indian engineers are working to design 2-3 nanometre chips within the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, adding that students at Indian academic institutions have already designed more than 325 chips.
Speaking at a global summit on the theme 'A World Between Orders', Modi said all facilities were being provided to build the talent pool needed for advanced chip design.
India was moving beyond its role as a back office to work as a brain office, he said. More than half the world's Global Capability Centres are in India, and they are now taking on engineering, analytics, product development and artificial intelligence work rather than routine support, he added.
Modi cited the filing of nearly 1.5 lakh patents in a year and the creation of 70 lakh jobs as markers of the shift, and repeated that India remains the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Under the pharmaceutical production-linked incentive scheme, about Rs 5,000 crore has been invested and more than 40 projects have begun operations, he said. He also restated the government's aim of creating six crore Lakhpati Didis, women in self-help groups who reach an annual household income of at least Rs 1 lakh.
Modi noted that India had supplied vaccines and medicines to more than 100 countries in times of need. Progress in chip design, he said, illustrated the country's changing place in the technology economy. At the summit he spoke about India's expanding technology capability, describing the country as a leading player in digital technology and startups, and said a stronger Indian economy gives the world an assurance of prosperity. Touching on self-reliance in pharmaceuticals, he said India was building capacity in key inputs such as active pharmaceutical ingredients. Advanced chips are seen by experts as central to artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other emerging technologies.