The Full Map of India's Semiconductor Value Chain: Made, Assembled, Imported

Quick Summary

India imports $30.3 billion of semiconductors a year (FY25), and every large plant shipping product today is a packaging and test facility, not a chip fab. The only front-end fabrication running at scale is a niche discrete device line. This is the complete map: what India makes, what it only assembles, what stays imported, which companies are building each layer, and where the value actually sits.

If you have been following the semiconductor headlines, you know the milestones: the ₹91,000 crore fab at Dholera, Micron's memory plant at Sanand, CG Power's OSAT going commercial in July 2026. What the headlines do not say is that the first commercial silicon from Dholera is a reported mid-2028 event, and that the plants shipping product today are packaging and test facilities. The chips themselves still come in by air.

The gap between those two stories is the real subject. India imports $30.3 billion of semiconductors a year (FY25), up from $5.7 billion in FY17, a 23% compound annual growth rate. Electronics production crossed ₹13.11 lakh crore in FY26, up 15.8%, with exports of ₹4.24 lakh crore. But domestic value addition in electronics sits at 18-20%. The factories are real. What India owns around them is the question.

The ledger: $30 billion a year, and chips are only the start

The single most important number in the whole buildout is not any factory capacity figure. It is the import bill. Semiconductor imports hit $30.3 billion in FY25; total electronics imports were $116.17 billion in FY26, of which $46.4 billion came from China alone, about 35% of India's total China bill.

The largest slice is integrated circuits under HS code 8542: $19.2 billion in 2023, with China supplying 52% of that. Memory die and modules add an estimated $4-6 billion a year, display panels an estimated $6-8 billion. Below those sit the inputs: manufacturing equipment (~$2.04 billion market in 2026, almost entirely imported), electronic chemicals and gases ($1.12-1.28 billion, 85-90% imported), silicon wafers (~$1.1 billion in 2024, nearly all imported), passive components ($3.7 billion), discrete power semiconductors ($0.80 billion), CMOS image sensors ($1.5 billion). Some categories are nearly one-country stories: Taiwan was the number one origin for processors and microcontrollers ($1.84 billion in Jan-May 2026 alone), and China accounted for 95% of camera module shipments into India.

The structural cause is common to nearly every row: there is no commercial front-end fab in India, so chips, and much of what a fab would consume, are imported. India's design houses ship the blueprints abroad, the chips are fabricated in Taiwan, China, Korea or Japan, and the finished silicon comes back in. That is why the import bill grew 23% a year even as electronics manufacturing boomed domestically.

What India already makes fits on one page

Commercial, revenue-generating semiconductor activity in India today is a short list. Everything else is under construction, announced, or still on paper.

Front-end device fabrication: CDIL at Mohali is the operational exception to the no-fab rule. It makes silicon and silicon carbide discrete devices, MOSFETs, IGBTs and Schottky diodes, at 600 million units a year with an expansion path to over 760 million, approved in August 2025. Its first SiC device shipped in February 2025. RIR Power has installed SiC epitaxial reactors in Odisha (September 2026) and is ramping, targeting 4,000 wafers a month, with epi production reported for Q3 FY27.

Gas blending: Stallion India Fluorochemicals began commercial blending of semiconductor and specialty gases at Khalapur on 21 September 2026, 1,200 tonnes a year, with a larger Mambattu facility (7,200 tonnes a year including helium gases) expected by end-Q3 FY27.

Defence PCBs: ECIL runs HDI multilayer PCB lines up to 18 layers at 3,000 square metres per shift, a defence-grade niche that is fully operational.

Design services: the biggest commercial capture of all, detailed later: MosChip, Cyient, Tata Elxsi, L&T Semiconductor and izmo all sell design or IP today.

Assembly: five OSAT/ATMP units are operational, detailed in the next section.

The OSAT wave: three plants shipping, eight more coming

This is where India is actually scaling. All live units package dies made abroad. The value captured per chip is the packaging and test margin, not the silicon itself, but the revenue is real and the pipeline is the deepest in the chain.

Micron (Sanand, foreign parent): the largest memory assembly and test plant in India, a ~$2.75 billion investment with a cleanroom over 500,000 square feet, commercial since March 2026. It ramps from tens of millions of chips in 2026 toward hundreds of millions in 2027, serving PCs, smartphones, data centres and automotive. The die is still imported; India captures packaging value only.

CG Semi (CG Power, Sanand): CG Power owns 92.3%, Renesas 6.76% and Stars Micro 0.9%. Line G1 went commercial on 4 July 2026 with peak capacity of 300 million units a year; the advanced G2 line (~14.5 million chips a day) is reported for end-CY26. The connections that matter: Renesas has committed to take roughly half of capacity, an anchor offtake, and the unit signed a capital subsidy (FSA) of ₹3,501 crore covering up to 70% of capex.

Kaynes Semicon (Kaynes Technology, Sanand): 6.3 million chips a day, 200 million chips a year initially and a reported 1 billion a year in five years, across three packaging tiers from QFN/TO to BGA/FC-BGA to 2D/2.5D/3D. Commercial production began March 2026 with first revenue guided Q3-Q4 FY27. The connections: its first product, an IPM5 power module (MCM), shipped to Alpha & Omega Semiconductor in the US; AOI provides technology, Mitsui handles supply chain, UST is a partner.

Tata Electronics OSAT (Assam, TSAT): flip-chip and Integrated System-in-Package, up to 48 million chips a day, trials running at about a quarter of capacity in September 2026, commercial expected December 2026/January 2027 per reports. Tata Electronics also runs an earlier OSAT at Vemgal, operational since December 2023, pre-dating the incentive scheme.

HCL-Foxconn JV (India Chip Pvt Ltd, Jewar): a display-driver IC (DDIC) OSAT with wafer-level packaging, 20,000 wafers a month, foundation laid February 2026, commercial reported 2027-28. HCL Tech also built a ₹185 crore ATE lab with Teradyne, Advantest and Keysight testers, a user-side test capability paired with the JV.

Sahasra: India's first operational OSAT, packaging ICs, eSIMs and memory, plus a leadframe design service. SPEL: an operational ATMP whose own reporting flags that automated test equipment is almost entirely imported.

Under construction or approved: Paras Semiconductors (₹6,200 crore, 50 acres in Madhya Pradesh, MoU July 2026, targeting sensors, optics, AI and HPC packages); 3DGS/HIPSPL in Odisha (3D heterogeneous integration with embedded glass substrates, ₹1,943.5 crore, groundbreaking April 2026, roughly 69,600 glass substrates and 13,200 3D modules a year); Sancode Semi in Odisha (₹1,650 crore, in-principle approval February 2026); Suchi Semicon at Surat (₹850 crore discrete packaging, cabinet nod around May 2026); and Crystal Matrix's compound fab plus Suchi's OSAT as a combined Dholera cluster.

The fab pipeline: one big bet and a shelf of stalled plans

Front-end fabrication, the layer that makes the actual chips, has exactly one large live project and a handful of niche or stalled ones.

Tata Electronics + PSMC, Dholera: the 300mm foundry at 28-110nm (reported opening node around 90nm), 50,000 wafers a month at full scale, targeting logic, PMIC, display drivers, MCUs and HPC for AI, automotive, computing, data storage and wireless. More than 50% built as of August 2026, trials targeted December 2026, commercial output reported around mid-2028. This single project carries the substitution story for the $19.2 billion IC import line, but only at mature nodes, not leading edge. It is also the anchor customer every equipment, gas and chemical supplier in this article is chasing.

SCL Mohali (Government of India): a ₹4,500 crore modernization of the strategic 180nm fab, announced December 2025, with a technology mandate covering RF-CMOS, BCD and CIS on 8-inch wafers. Cyient holds the engineering and technology-transfer mandate, with a reported ~$100 million pipeline tied to it.

Crystal Matrix (Dholera): a compound fab making GaN and Mini/Micro-LED on 6-inch wafers, 72,000 square metres of panels a year plus 24,000 RGB wafer sets a year, cabinet nod around May 2026. A niche entry against a very large display-panel import line.

SiCSem (Bhubaneswar): covered in the SiC section below.

Stalled or dropped: Adani's planned analog fab with Tower Semiconductor at Taloja never received ISM approval and talks paused in April-May 2025; Vedanta's fab plan with Foxconn, ISMC (Next Orbit + Tower), IGSS and Silectric (Zoho) are all shelved. The live pipeline has consolidated to Tata, Micron, CG Power, Kaynes, HCL-Foxconn plus the Odisha cluster.

SiC and GaN: the one layer going vertical

Power semiconductors are the only segment where die-level value is being built onshore, across four connected players.

RIR Power (Odisha): buys SiC substrate wafers externally (about $250 for a 150mm wafer), grows epitaxial layers in-house, and packages "Silicon Carbide to System" power modules. Its ~₹618 crore plan targets 4,000 wafers a month. The connections: letters of intent from Alpha & Omega Semiconductor, ST Micro and Microchip, foreign device makers wanting India-qualified SiC epi wafers.

SiCSem (Bhubaneswar): India's first integrated compound-semiconductor fab, 60,000 SiC wafers a year plus 96 million packaged units, ₹3,000 crore, in collaboration with Clas-SiC of the UK. Archean Chemical holds 21.33% of SiCSem; the FSA was signed 11 May 2026 and the fab is under construction. The structure matters: the fab becomes a captive offtaker for Archean's chemical and materials skills while creating India's first domestic SiC wafer source.

CDIL: the silicon and SiC discrete fab described above, the only operating front-end device line.

L&T Semiconductor (under L&T): a fabless house that launched a 1200V SiC MOSFET platform at SEMICON India 2026. It designs in India and fabs abroad for now, but its devices are the demand pull that RIR's epi and SiCSem's wafers would eventually feed. Kaynes Semicon completes the loop by packaging power modules, its IPM5 for Alpha & Omega.

The hidden supply chain: equipment, wafers, gases, chemicals

Beyond fabs and OSATs sits the input layer, and here India's dependence is deepest. Equipment is ~100% imported; the $2.04 billion market has no domestic production, in the words of ASM Technologies' own management, "no semiconductor equipment manufacturing is currently happening in India."

Equipment plays: ASM Technologies, through its ASM HHV joint venture with Hind High Vacuum, is building an indigenous silicon crystal puller, with a prototype expected within about six months, and already sells intermediate wafer-handling and storage systems on repeat orders to the solar industry. Rana Semiconductor is cited by Waaree for crystal ingot pullers. INOX India supplies cryogenic transfer lines and ultra-high-purity gas equipment and already counts Micron, Foxconn, Tata Assam and Tata Dholera among its customers, the clearest named order flow tied to specific build-outs in the entire listed universe. 3M India does vacuum-chamber surface finishing. HORIBA is considering local manufacture of flow controllers. Tata signed a tooling agreement with ASML on 16 May 2026 for India's first front-end fab tooling tie-up. Global toolmakers (KLA, Tokyo Electron, ASM, SCREEN SPE) run engineering and service centres in India but manufacture abroad. HCL Tech's ATE lab and Kaynes' in-house ATE are users of imported testers, not makers, which shows where test-equipment value leaks out.

Wafers: there is no commercial 300mm silicon wafer producer and no named wafer supplier to the Dholera fab. The only adjacent plays are ASM HHV's polysilicon production equipment (solar-oriented) and a solar-wafer joint venture between Sino-American Silicon and Premier Energies, which is PV-grade, not semiconductor-grade. Silicon wafer production stays import-dependent.

Gases: Stallion is the most advanced localization in the whole input layer, but it qualifies and blends imported molecules; helium is 100% imported and Stallion sources it long-term from Qatar via Sharjah Oxygen, and it does not manufacture NF3 or silane. The blending margin is real; the molecules are not yet made here.

Chemicals: a cluster of Indian chemical companies is upgrading base chemistry toward electronic grade: Navin Fluorine (hydrogen fluoride, BF3), TANFAC (electronic-grade dilute HF), GACL (high-purity hydrogen peroxide), Gujarat Fluorochemicals (through a new subsidiary, GFCL Semiconductor & Advanced Materials Ltd, incorporated 26 June 2026), Anupam Rasayan (encapsulation, photoresist and sealant chemicals; 15% of revenue already from electronics, EV and semiconductor; two molecules commercialized and over 35 in R&D), Epigral (epoxy resin, 125,000 tonnes a year, ₹600 crore, second-half FY28), and Sumitomo Chemical India evaluating entry with its Japanese parent. Acutaas makes India's only fab-grade photoresist. FUJIFILM signed a memorandum with Gujarat on 29 June 2026 to make advanced semiconductor materials. None of these is yet confirmed fab-qualified at scale; qualification at Dholera, SiCSem, CDIL or RIR is the gating step.

The packaging materials gap: OSATs will import their own bill of materials

As the OSAT wave goes commercial, it consumes substrates, leadframes, molding compounds and bonding materials. Every one of those is currently imported, and the domestic pipeline is thin.

Substrates and substrate-class PCBs: Amber Enterprises has the deepest push. Its joint venture with Korea Circuit (₹3,250 crore) was inaugurated in 2026; its Ascent-K unit at Jewar (16 acres, ₹3,200-3,215 crore, ECMS-approved) will make HDI, flex and semiconductor-substrate PCBs, with construction from June 2026 and trials reported for Q3 FY2028; Ascent Circuits at Hosur is a ₹991 crore multilayer PCB line with trials reported around September-October 2026; Shogini Technoarts adds ₹500 crore. Syrma SGS is also pushing into PCB manufacturing. The demand side is already local: CG Semi (QFP, WB-BGA, FC-BGA), Kaynes, Tata OSAT, Sahasra and Micron all consume substrates. The reported ECMS 2.0 target for cumulative PCB investment of ₹7,000-10,000 crore is substitution of 25-30% of the ₹40,000 crore annual PCB import bill.

Leadframes: no Indian leadframe stamper or etcher surfaced in the research. The closest domestic activities are Sahasra's leadframe design service and the Kaynes-Mitsui alliance, under which Mitsui holds the exclusive right to procure raw materials including leadframes from Japanese and foreign suppliers, an import-assurance deal rather than domestic production. Copper alloy strip processors (POCL, Ram Ratna, Hindalco) and precision stampers (KDDL/Eigen, Motherson Precision Metals, Aequs) have upstream or potential capability but no confirmed leadframe supply. One unverified external claim exists of a Korea-India venture producing leadframes, without filing evidence.

Molding compounds (EMC): no Indian EMC is qualified at any OSAT line. Epigral's epoxy entry attacks the upstream raw material, and Anupam Rasayan lists encapsulation in its portfolio, but the compound itself is not yet made domestically.

Bonding materials: no domestic producer of bonding wire, die attach adhesive, solder ball or underfill was found. The Kaynes-Mitsui alliance covers die attach materials as an import-assurance channel. Shaily Engineering Plastics makes specialized conductive-plastic semiconductor trays, the handling and storage consumable every packaged chip needs, as the sole Indian manufacturing partner for its customer.

Design: the value India already owns

Design is the one high-value stage India already holds, and it is not a small thing. Roughly 20% of the world's chip designers work in India, more than 85,000 design engineers, with over 80% of the semiconductor GCC workforce concentrated in Bengaluru and Hyderabad and integrated circuits accounting for 60-64% of Indian semiconductor GCC revenue. Global analysis puts chip design at about half of total chain value added. India's capture is in services and GCC form, not product IP ownership, but the design fee stays in India even though the chips are fabricated abroad and re-imported.

The listed design names: MosChip (600+ tapeouts, silicon engineering of ₹470.57 crore, about 80% of FY26 revenue, including a 5nm HPC design for C-DAC), Cyient (the SCL 180nm technology mandate, ~$100 million pipeline), Tata Elxsi (chip and SoC design services), L&T Semiconductor (fabless SiC and analog), izmo (indigenous 40 GHz RF package IP), and design-stage houses Saankhya and Aheesa. The policy backbone is the Design-Linked Incentive scheme and the DLI/ChipIN hub, which gives 105 companies access to EDA tools and had 23 tape-outs by March 2026, with the programme doubled to ₹200 crore in 2025-26. The tools themselves, from Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens EDA and Arm, remain an imported US-led oligopoly; no full-flow Indian EDA suite exists.

Board level: the fastest substitution is not a chip

The quickest credible import substitution is happening one level below chips, on the board. The ₹40,000 crore annual PCB bill, with 88% of bare PCBs imported, is attacked by Amber's Korea Circuit and Ascent-K projects, Syrma's PCB push and ECIL's defence HDI lines. Passive components, a $3.7 billion market, have announcements under the ECMS scheme from Vishay, Vishay Precision Transducers, TDK and Dhruv, though high-end MLCCs remain absent. Keltron commissioned India's first supercapacitor unit at Kannur in November 2024. Camera modules, where China supplied 95% of shipments, are being localised through the PLI's local value-addition requirement, though no single named Indian project surfaced.

At the end of the chain, the EMS base is enormous: 97-98% of smartphones sold in India are made in India, through Dixon, Amber, Optiemus, VVDN, Syrma, Foxconn India and Tata Electronics, but at 18-20% domestic value addition. Every chip in those phones is still imported.

The smile curve: where the money sits, where India sits

The global device market was $791.7 billion in 2025, with logic ($301.9 billion, 38%) and memory ($223.1 billion, 28%) together two-thirds of it. Revenue concentrates in the manufacturing middle: top-10 foundries took $169.47 billion (TSMC alone about $122.4 billion at a 59.9% gross margin), equipment $135.1 billion, materials $67.7-80.8 billion, OSAT $65.82 billion. But value added concentrates at the ends. Design is roughly half of total chain value added; EDA ($19.2 billion) and IP ($6.2-9.8 billion) carry the highest margins. The widest, thinnest slice is electronics manufacturing, $555.7-686 billion of revenue on which assemblers run about 10.7% gross margin and slightly negative net margins.

India today earns at the two thin ends: high-value design services (talent) and low-value-add EMS volume. The revenue-fat middle, fab, OSAT, materials and equipment, is over 90% import-dependent. By the reported trajectory of live projects, the middle fills unevenly: packaging and test go fully domestic within a few years, mature-node silicon fab starts around mid-2028 at Dholera, SiC goes vertical, and board-level substitution ramps. What realistically stays import-dependent: leading-edge fab equipment, 300mm silicon wafers, advanced packaging materials, memory die fabrication, full-flow EDA, and advanced display panels.

The company map: connections, not just names

The full roster of Indian listed companies with a specific position in the chain, with the mechanism that ties each to the buildout:

What to watch

The buildout is a sequence of reported milestones, and the order they land in determines who earns what. Watch whether Dholera's trials begin around December 2026 as reported and whether commercial output follows around mid-2028; that is the single event that moves the $19.2 billion IC import line. Watch CG Semi's G2 advanced line by end-CY26 and Tata OSAT Assam going commercial around December 2026/January 2027, which would take India from three shipping OSATs to five. Watch Stallion's Mambattu plant by end-Q3 FY27 and RIR's SiC epi production in Q3 FY27, the two nearest input-layer milestones. Watch Ascent-K's substrate PCB trials in Q3 FY2028, the closest thing to a domestic packaging-substrate supply. And watch whether the Kaynes-Mitsui material flow and the INOX order book convert into disclosed supplier relationships as OSATs ramp. None of these are confirmed dates; they are reported targets, and each is worth checking against the actual filing when it lands.

Frequently asked questions

What does India actually manufacture in semiconductors today?
Very little at the chip level. CDIL operates a discrete device fab (silicon and SiC MOSFETs, IGBTs, Schottky diodes). RIR Power is ramping SiC epitaxial wafers. Stallion blends specialty gases. ECIL makes defence-grade PCBs. Everything else shipping at scale is packaging and test of imported dies.

What is the difference between a fab and an OSAT?
A fab (wafer fabrication) turns wafers into chips through lithography, etching and deposition. An OSAT or ATMP takes finished dies and packages, assembles and tests them. India's commercial units today are all OSATs; the fabs, Dholera and SCL, are under construction or announced.

Why does India import so many chips if it has so many designers?
Design and manufacturing are separate. Indian design houses, GCCs and fabless companies like MosChip and L&T Semiconductor design chips, but those designs are fabricated abroad, mostly in Taiwan, and the finished chips are re-imported. The design value stays in India; the manufacturing value leaves.

Which companies are building OSAT and ATMP plants in India?
Micron (commercial), CG Power's CG Semi (commercial), Kaynes Semicon (commercial), Sahasra and SPEL (operational), Tata Electronics Assam (trials), HCL-Foxconn's India Chip JV (building), Paras Semiconductors, 3DGS/HIPSPL, Sancode Semi and Suchi Semicon (approved or announced).

When is the Dholera fab expected to produce chips?
Reported targets: trials around December 2026 and commercial production around mid-2028, at 28-110nm with 50,000 wafers a month at full scale. These are reported timelines, not confirmed dates.

Which parts of the semiconductor chain have no meaningful Indian player?
300mm silicon wafers, leading-edge fab equipment, leadframes, molding compounds, bonding materials, DRAM/NAND die fabrication, MEMS and CMOS image sensor fabs, full-flow EDA and high-end MLCCs. The research found no domestic producer for these; that is a not-found finding, not proof of absence.

What is the fastest import-substitution win?
Board level. PCB and substrate projects under ECMS, led by Amber's Korea Circuit and Ascent-K units, target 25-30% of the ₹40,000 crore annual PCB import bill, with trials reported from late 2026 through FY2028, much sooner than any front-end fab revenue.

Data note

Facts and figures are as of 22 September 2026, drawn from company filings, result-season commentary, and published reports reviewed this session. Import values mix customs data and third-party market estimates across reporting years; figures marked est. are midpoints of reported ranges. Project timelines are reported targets, not confirmed dates. Where the research found no Indian player in a category, that is a not-found finding from the documents reviewed, not a confirmed absence. Market capitalisations are as of 22 September 2026.

This is historical and descriptive analysis, not investment advice, and was not prepared by a SEBI-registered Research Analyst.