A History of Semiconductors in India
India’s journey in semiconductors has been long on Design and Design Services, but short on Fabs, Fabless Design and IP… With SEMI India Semicon 2025 kicking off today, the momentum is unmistakable!
1️⃣ India Semiconductor Mission – A ₹76,000 crore (~$10B) push through PLI & DLI schemes, building the full stack from design to fabs to packaging. Very similar to China’s 2014 playbook that spawned 2000+ Fabless startups in 7+ years, can India compress this even faster?
2️⃣ Fabs & Packaging – 1 Fab + 5 OSAT/packaging projects (Tata, Micron, Foxconn-HCL JV, RRP, Suchi) underway; first packaged chips due later this year.
3️⃣ Startup Surge – 120+ startups today, fueled by DLI schemes. Focus areas: SoC/IP (35%), 5G, analog/RF, edge AI, quantum, photonics, EDA tools, and secure hardware. 💡 Recent Funding momentum: Netrasemi ($12.5M), QpiAI ($32M). 🌏 Global validation and early M&A: Renesas acquired Steradian; Micron set up a major ATMP unit.
4️⃣ Domestic Demand & Export Scale – Electronics manufacturing headed to $300B by 2026; chipset demand projected at ~$110B by 2031 (~10% of global). Strong push for import substitution in strategic areas.
5️⃣ Talent & Research – India has 20% of global semiconductor design talent (~220K engineers) and produces 11% of global research papers (2020–25 up 26%). The new India Semiconductor Research Center (ISRC), modeled on IMEC, is planned to drive deep R&D. Turning Point – After decades of missed chances, this time is different— India #Semiconductor foray is visible, credible, and accelerating!
