Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: Start with a number that signals intent. This month India cleared a second, expanded phase of its semiconductor programme — a “Semicon 2.0” push carrying an outlay reported at about ₹1.275 lakh crore, spanning chip design, fabrication, display manufacturing, advanced packaging and equipment. It is the latest, largest marker in a multi-year effort to build, almost from scratch, one of the hardest industries on earth — and to do so as a deliberate, structural bet rather than a quick win.
Read where the effort already stands, because the ground truth is more advanced than the sceptics allow. Micron’s assembly-and-test facility at Sanand is in volume production, targeting tens of millions of packaged chips this year; a Kaynes packaging plant was inaugurated in the same hub earlier in 2026; and Tata’s greenfield wafer fab at Dholera, Gujarat — built at the 28-nanometre node that suits automotive, industrial and IoT chips — is targeting its first silicon by around the end of 2026. Assembly and testing first, fabrication next: India is climbing the semiconductor ladder in the sensible order.
Climbing the ladder in order: Assembly and test at Sanand in volume production, a Dholera fab targeting first silicon around end-2026, and a ~₹1.275 lakh crore “Semicon 2.0” outlay — India’s chip build-out as a patient, structural bet.
Chips are the one industry where patience is the strategy. The countries that lead it spent decades and fortunes; the prize is worth the wait.
The Long View
• Commitment: “Semicon 2.0” outlay reported near ₹1.275 lakh crore across the chain
• Assembly/test: Micron’s Sanand plant in volume production; Kaynes packaging live
• Fabrication: Tata’s Dholera 28nm fab targeting first silicon around end-2026
• Payoff: supply-chain resilience, high-value jobs, a strategic industry at home
The honest account names the size of the task. Semiconductor fabrication is among the most capital-intensive, technically exacting and cyclical businesses in existence; it demands ultra-reliable power and water, deep talent pools, and a supply web of hundreds of specialist vendors that takes years to assemble. India is a late entrant against entrenched leaders in Taiwan, South Korea and the United States, and the road from a first fab to genuine competitiveness is long. None of that is a reason to hesitate; it is the reason to be clear-eyed and patient.
The constructive, long-view read is that a resilient domestic chip base is worth building precisely because it is hard — it underpins everything from cars and phones to defence and AI, and recent history has shown how costly it is to depend entirely on distant supply chains. The way forward is steady execution: finish the fabs and packaging lines under way, build the specialist talent and vendor ecosystem around them, secure reliable power and water, and hold the policy commitment across cycles. Silicon roots grow slowly; planted with patience, they anchor an economy for a generation.