- SEMICON India 2026 turns Yashobhoomi into a showcase of India’s semiconductor journey—from electronics manufacturing to chip design, fabrication and advanced packaging
- ‘Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem’ captures a decisive shift from asking whether India can make chips to how fast it can build the ecosystem around them
- ₹1.64 lakh crore-plus semiconductor investments across 12 projects signal the transition from policy ambition to manufacturing on the ground
- From ₹1.9 lakh crore electronics output to ₹13.11 lakh crore, India’s manufacturing surge provides the foundation for the next silicon revolution
- 85,000 skilled engineers, 211 chips taped out and ChipIN reaching over 1 lakh engineers point to talent emerging as India’s strategic semiconductor advantage
NE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY BUREAU
NEW DELHI, SEPT 15
India’s semiconductor moment is no longer a distant aspiration. On September 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate SEMICON India 2026 at Yashobhoomi, Dwarka, bringing global chipmakers, policymakers, investors, researchers and technology leaders together around a question that could shape India’s economic and strategic future: Can the country move from being a major electronics manufacturing base to becoming a complete semiconductor powerhouse?
The three-day event, built around the theme “Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem,” represents a fundamental change in India’s semiconductor narrative. The ambition is no longer confined to manufacturing a chip. It is about building everything around it—from design and fabrication to packaging, equipment, materials, research, talent and the systems that ultimately turn silicon into economic and strategic power.
The tiny object that runs the modern world
Hold up a smartphone and somewhere inside it is a piece of silicon smaller than a postage stamp, carrying billions of transistors switching on and off billions of times a second.
The semiconductor has become one of the most sophisticated products of human engineering—and the foundation of the digital economy.
Chips now power automobiles, aircraft, drones, medical equipment, satellites, telecom networks, defence systems and artificial intelligence infrastructure. With the global electronics industry estimated at around $4.3 trillion, semiconductors form the foundational layer beneath an increasingly interconnected economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of that foundation. Automobile factories were forced to slow or shut production not because steel, labour or demand was unavailable, but because critical chips were in short supply.
The lesson was stark: a nation that does not secure access to semiconductors risks leaving every industry above the chip layer exposed.
The global race for semiconductor resilience therefore did not begin with COVID-19. The pandemic simply accelerated it.
India’s electronics leap creates the launchpad
India’s semiconductor journey has deep roots, but for decades the country struggled to build the complete ecosystem required to compete globally.
That equation began changing with reforms in foreign investment, taxation and customs, followed by the rapid expansion of electronics manufacturing.
The transformation is dramatic.
India’s electronics production rose from about ₹1.9 lakh crore in 2014-15 to ₹13.11 lakh crore in 2025-26—almost a sevenfold increase. Electronics exports surged from around ₹38,000 crore to ₹4.24 lakh crore.
The smartphone story is even more striking. Production jumped from ₹18,000 crore to ₹6.27 lakh crore, while exports soared from around ₹1,500 crore to ₹2.59 lakh crore.
Smartphones, which did not figure among India’s top 100 exported goods in 2014, emerged as the country’s largest exported commodity in FY 2025-26, overtaking petroleum products and gems and jewellery.
India now manufactures 99.2% of the mobile phones it uses, transforming itself from a major importer into a net exporter and creating an electronics manufacturing engine supporting around 2.5 million jobs.
That transformation provides the crucial foundation for the next leap.
Electronics manufacturing proved that India could build at scale. Semiconductors are the test of whether it can move further up the technology value chain.
From policy paper to silicon on the ground
The next chapter formally took shape with the Semicon India Programme in 2021, backed by an initial outlay of ₹76,000 crore.
Its objective was not to create isolated fabs as showcase projects, but to build an ecosystem spanning chip design, fabrication, packaging and testing, equipment, materials, research and skilled manpower.
In July 2026, the government approved Semicon 2.0, expanding the foundation with an outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore.
The six broad pillars—chip design; semiconductor equipment and materials; fabrication facilities; advanced packaging; research and development; and talent development—reflect the complexity of the industry India is attempting to build.
The numbers indicate that the programme is moving beyond policy announcements.
Twelve semiconductor projects across six states, involving investment commitments of more than ₹1.64 lakh crore, have been approved. They cover silicon and compound-semiconductor fabs, display fabrication and advanced packaging.
Most significantly, three facilities have already entered commercial production.
That is perhaps the most important marker of India’s semiconductor journey: the story is beginning to move from government policy documents to functioning manufacturing facilities.
The real competitive edge may be India’s engineers
Silicon plants require billions of dollars. But money alone cannot create a semiconductor ecosystem.
Engineers can.
India has set a target of building a pool of 85,000 skilled semiconductor engineers within this decade. Through the Chips to Startup programme, Electronic Design Automation tools have been deployed across 320 academic institutions, with more than 68,000 students trained.
Meanwhile, 24 semiconductor design projects have received financial support, while 105 startups and MSMEs have received EDA tool support under the Design Linked Incentive Scheme.
By April 2026, 211 chips had been taped out by 75 institutions, demonstrating that chip-design capability is spreading beyond a small group of elite laboratories. Seven of these chips have already been fabricated at different nodes, including advanced nodes down to 12 nanometres.
This is where India’s semiconductor story could become distinctive.
Democratising the architecture of chip design
The ChipIN Centre at C-DAC, established under the Chips to Startup and Design Linked Incentive programmes, is designed to make sophisticated chip-design infrastructure accessible to a much wider pool of engineers, institutions and entrepreneurs.
The national facility provides access to advanced chip-design tools, fabrication services and specialised training.
Its reach is already substantial: more than 1 lakh engineers from over 500 organisations, including 400 academic institutions and 100 start-ups, have accessed its facilities.
These organisations have collectively developed more than 300 chip designs for fabrication at SCL, Mohali, and advanced foundries overseas, generating more than 4 crore hours of chip-design tool usage.
By sharing expensive infrastructure and specialised tools, the initiative seeks to lower entry barriers, reduce development costs and accelerate innovation.
The larger ambition is unmistakable: make chip design less of a privilege of a few laboratories and more of a national innovation capability.
From domestic ambition to global silicon alliances
India’s semiconductor strategy is also acquiring a geopolitical dimension.
On the fifth day of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, India formally joined the Pax Silica coalition, bringing it into a wider grouping focused on securing global silicon supply chains.
The objective extends across the entire “silicon stack”—from critical minerals and semiconductor fabrication to advanced AI systems and deployment infrastructure.
The underlying strategic message is clear: semiconductor supply chains cannot remain concentrated in too few hands.
For India, participation in such arrangements indicates that its semiconductor ambitions are increasingly linked with questions of supply-chain resilience, technological sovereignty, economic security and the future architecture of artificial intelligence.
Where India’s semiconductor pieces converge
This is why SEMICON India 2026 is more than another technology exhibition.
Over three days at Yashobhoomi, more than 600 exhibitors, 300 international companies and 150-plus speakers are expected across 15,000 square metres of exhibition space.
Six country pavilions and 12 state pavilions will stand alongside a startup showcase, student hackathon, workforce-development pavilion and women’s forum.
Together, they represent the different pieces of the ecosystem India has been assembling.
A semiconductor may take years to design and months to fabricate, but its economic footprint can last for decades. The chip inside a smartphone, car, medical device, aircraft or satellite is only the visible end of a much larger chain involving scientists, engineers, designers, materials suppliers, equipment manufacturers, fabs, packaging facilities and software ecosystems.
That is ultimately the significance of SEMICON India 2026.
India is no longer merely asking whether it can enter the chip race. It is building the capabilities to compete across the silicon-to-systems spectrum.
The real test, however, begins after the exhibition halls empty.
If investments become factories, factories become supply chains, supply chains create intellectual property and intellectual property produces globally competitive products, India’s semiconductor mission could evolve from an industrial policy into one of the defining economic transformations of the next decade.
The dream began with silicon.
The ambition now is to build the systems—and the strategic power—that sit above it.
