Sanand (Gujarat), Sep 23 : Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday said that India has embarked upon its journey to become a semiconductor hub, as US-based Micron Technology broke grounds for its about Rs 22,500 crore ($2.75 billion) chip assembly and test facility here. Stressing that India will soon need 5 lakh crore chips to meet the growing demand, the minister said within three months of Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting Sanjay Mehrotra, the President and CEO of Micron Technology in the US, the company has started construction on its plant which is unprecedented. Micron has committed to investing up to $825 million in building the semiconductor assembly and test facility in India, with support from the government. The combined investment of $2.75 billion is projected to create around 5,000 direct jobs and offer 15,000 community job opportunities over the next five years. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, said that for a country that has missed several opportunities for the last 70 years, this is a historic and epic moment. 'We have made tremendous strides in the last 9-10 years. It is certainly a very important milestone and I have absolutely no doubt that this Micron's state-of-the-art plant will be a beacon to all investors, other manufacturers and participants in the global semiconductor ecosystem,' Chandrasekhar told the gathering. The Assembly, Test, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) of the company is being set up on 93 acres in Sanand GIDC-II industrial estate and is expected to be commissioned within 18 months. The facility will focus on transforming wafers into Ball Grid Array (BGA) ' integrated circuit packages, memory modules and solid-state drives. In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised 50 per cent financial assistance to players wishing to set up semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the country. At the SemiconIndia 2023 in Gandhinagar, he had said that 'we are continuously carrying out policy reforms to accelerate the growth of the country's semiconductor sector'. (Nishant Arora can be reached at nishant.a@ians.in) /IANS