Indian talent will be critical in powering the Global semiconductor market’s doubling from 550 million to a trillion. 

In an exclusive interview with Col. Anurag Awasthi, the IVP Semi CEO, Raja Manickam said it took the global semiconductor market 10 years to reach 550 billion. It will double to a trillion dollars in the next five years. 

India’s engineering talent will be critical in achieving this target, he said. 

“If you advertise for a thousand engineers, 10 lakh engineers will show up for an interview. No other country will have that. When I do business in Malaysia, if I need 10 test engineers, I'll be lucky if two guys show up,” Manickam said. 

Talent was not an issue, he said, tinkering was. “We need to guide engineers into more of a tinkering rather than a practical approach. “The last 15 to 20 years have been more towards type coding and all that. They've lost the tinkering mindset that was in my generation.”

Talent development here in India and workforce development will be critical factors he said. 

Asked about the success of NVIDIA, Raja Manickam attributed, “Nvidia is successful is actually that they started with CUDA, the software, and then they built the hardware which goes along with it, because you need to synchronise and all that. And their hardware, probably, has the best performance for AI and ML applications.”

Manickam highlighted his mission to coach and mentor the next generations to come because they are the ones who are going to build the future India, and he emphasised funding the startups for manufacturing semiconductors

Watch the full podcast here 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w51AIbaDA0A

Arjun Dev Singh

Arjun Dev Singh has a deep interest in defence, security, and strategic affairs. With a strong analytical lens and a passion for military and geopolitical developments, Arjun strives to bring clarity and context to complex national and international issues.