Blitz India Business
The figure that captures India’s semiconductor bet is $21 billion-plus — the approved investment under the India Semiconductor Mission that is now taking physical form in Gujarat. The milestone in sight: Tata Electronics, with Taiwan’s Powerchip, is targeting first silicon from its 300-mm fab at Dholera by the end of this year, the first chips fabricated at commercial scale on Indian soil.
The value chain around it is already live. Micron’s assembly, test and packaging plant at Sanand is operational and expected to process tens of millions of chips in 2026, scaling toward hundreds of millions in 2027, while packaging and test units from CG Power, Kaynes and others cluster nearby. For a country that imports the bulk of the chips inside its phones, cars and appliances, each unit made at home is import substitution with a strategic dividend.
Chip capex is a multi-year bet on capability, not a quarterly trade. India is buying the learning curve first and the frontier later.
The economics demand patience. India is starting with mature, high-demand nodes rather than the bleeding edge — the disciplined way to build yield, supplier depth and a skilled workforce before reaching for advanced geometries. Yield ramps, talent pipelines and a domestic materials-and-equipment ecosystem are the real tests ahead, and the honest measure of success will be reliable output, not ribbon-cuttings.
The constructive read is that the mission is de-risking a critical dependency while seeding a high-value manufacturing base. The way forward is to convert first wafers into dependable yield, keep co-investing with the states, and deepen the supplier ecosystem — so that each node mastered becomes the platform for the next.