Semiconductors

India had no commercial chip fab of its own. The current push began with the India Semiconductor Mission in December 2021, a ₹76,000 crore programme offering up to 50% capital support. COVID-era supply shocks and US–China tech tensions gave it urgency, and by 2026, 12 projects worth over ₹1.64 lakh crore had been approved.

The centrepiece is the Tata–PSMC fab at Dholera, Gujarat — India's first commercial wafer fab, a ₹91,000 crore line designed for 50,000 wafer starts a month at 28nm. Packaging came first because it is quicker to scale: Micron, Kaynes Semicon and CG Semi at Sanand began commercial production in 2026, and Tata's unit at Jagiroad (Assam) is among those set to follow.

Chip-making has two halves: the ultra-expensive fabrication (etching circuits onto silicon wafers in a 'fab') and the back-end assembly, testing and packaging. India began with the achievable back-end and mature-node fabs rather than cutting-edge chips, under the India Semiconductor Mission, which offers up to half the project cost as a subsidy. Foreign partners bring the technology (Micron; Taiwan's PSMC with Tata) while India supplies land, incentives and its large pool of chip-design engineers.

India's semiconductor push moved from paper to reality: Micron's Sanand plant — the first operational facility — was inaugurated in early 2026, and Tata's Dholera fab (₹91,000 crore, with Taiwan's PSMC) is under construction. In July 2026 the Cabinet approved Semicon 2.0, a ₹1,27,500 crore next phase covering design, equipment and materials, more fabs, packaging, research and talent. The prize is cutting reliance on imported chips for everything from phones to cars.

In March 2025 the first production lots of Vikram 3201 were handed to ISRO — the first fully Make-in-India 32-bit microprocessor qualified for the harsh conditions of launch vehicles, designed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre with the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) and fabricated at SCL's 180nm fab. It handles floating-point operations and the Ada language used in launch-vehicle avionics, and was validated in space on the PSLV-C60 mission. It is the proof point the mission was built for: not an imported design assembled here, but a chip conceived, designed and fabricated in India.

₹76,000 crore India Semiconductor Mission (2021). Over ₹1.64 lakh crore approved across 12 projects (July 2026). ₹91,000 crore Dholera fab, 50,000 wafer starts a month. Commercial production began in 2026 at Micron, Kaynes and CG Semi. ₹1,27,500 crore Semicon 2.0 (2026). Sources: Union Cabinet, MeitY, PIB.