VNIT launches semiconductor design lab under MeitY ChipIN programme

VNIT Nagpur has formally inaugurated a semiconductor design and verification lab under MeitY's ChipIN Centre, becoming the eighth institution nationally and the first in Maharashtra outside the Mumbai-Pune belt to host one.

The ₹38 crore facility includes 60 seats licensed for Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA toolchains, two dedicated GPU clusters for verification workloads, and a clean characterisation room shared with the physics department.

Three industry partners — including a Bengaluru-based fabless startup and a US-headquartered IP house — have committed to sponsor up to three student tape-outs per year on a partner foundry, with IP rights jointly held.

Admission to the lab's dedicated minor opens in the January 2027 semester. Seats are open to electronics, electrical and computer-science undergraduates from the third semester onward.

What this changes: chip-design hiring in India is bottlenecked at the talent layer, not the capex layer. A working lab at VNIT — feeding into MIHAN's growing R&D footprint — is one of the more concrete on-ramps the city has built in years.