Sanand (Gujarat), Sep 23 : Global chip manufacturers have realised India's potential and US-based Micron Technology breaking grounds for its Rs 22,500 crore facility here will set a benchmark for our semiconductor journey, Union IT and Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told IANS on Saturday. Saying that the first 'Make in India' chip from Micron's plant is most likely to come in December 2024, the minister said the pace at which Micron kicked off work on the Sanand project is highly commendable. "This plant sets a major milestone for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of making India a semiconductor hub ' the way the country has achieved in sectors like mobile, electronics, defense, railways, aviation and multiple other areas where progress is visible," Vaishnaw emphasised. The Micron plant at Sanand will work as a foundational industry, in order to create such foundational industries across the country, the minister emphasised. The Assembly, Test, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) of Micron 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. According to the minister, the government has also received a couple of more semiconductor manufacturing proposals and an announcement will be made soon. "Chips today are an integral part of our lives. The semiconductor manufacturing is also going to help the IT hardware PLI 2.0 in a very big way because this PLI has special incentives for chips which are manufactured in India," Vaishnaw told IANS. More than 45 companies have submitted applications under PLI Hardware 2.0 and "many of them are already in the process of setting up their plants," the minister noted. From about Rs 2 lakh crore as of now, India will see demand for semiconductors to increase to Rs 5 lakh crore in the next few years, he added. Vaishnaw also said a high-speed train will start plying between Ahmedabad and Sanand in the next six months. (Nishant Arora can be reached at nishant.a@ians.in) /IANS