SEMICON India 2026 drew 600+ companies as India moved from semiconductor policy to commercial chip production and factory expansion.
NEW DELHI: SEMICON India 2026 concluded its three-day run at the Yashobhoomi Convention Centre in Dwarka on September 19, 2026, drawing more than 600 companies, delegations from 52 countries, and roughly 50,000 visitors under the theme “Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem.” Organised jointly by the India Semiconductor Mission, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and global industry body SEMI, the summit’s fifth edition marked a deliberate pivot from policy announcements toward commercial execution, a shift Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself acknowledged when he noted that earlier editions had focused on files and foundation stones, while this one centred on chips actually reaching customers.
Day One Set the Financial Tone
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw opened proceedings by disclosing that India had secured approximately ₹1 lakh crore, or $11 billion to $12 billion, in investment interest under the newly approved Semicon 2.0 policy, spanning equipment manufacturing, specialty chemicals, packaging units and wafer fabrication over a two to three year horizon. Vaishnaw was careful to note that individual corporate names would be disclosed in stages as company boards formalise approvals, an important caveat given that this figure represents interest rather than binding capital commitments.
Equipment maker Applied Materials backed that momentum with a $5 billion, ten-year pledge under its “India Vision 2035” roadmap, covering a research park and a tenfold expansion of local supply chain capacity, while Lam Research signalled a $1.1 billion outlay for its first Indian component plant. Domestic champion Tata Electronics led corporate engagement with 16 supply-chain MoUs spanning European, Japanese, Malaysian and Singaporean partners, aimed at building vendor networks for its Dholera wafer fab and Jagiroad packaging facility. Modi, addressing the summit on his 76th birthday, tied these announcements to broader macroeconomic signals, citing 7.8% first-quarter GDP growth and Japan’s Rating and Investment Information agency upgrading India’s sovereign credit rating for the first time in nearly 35 years.
Day Two Moved From Policy to Factory Floor
The second day shifted attention squarely to manufacturing execution. Modi virtually inaugurated commercial production at Suchi Semicon’s ₹868-crore OSAT facility in Surat, a plant with annual capacity for over 1,033 million chips supporting advanced packaging formats. CDIL Semiconductor simultaneously declared commercial production at its Mohali facility, while L&T Semiconductor Technologies unveiled 40 indigenous products, including India’s first fully domestically designed 1200V silicon carbide power platform for EV chargers and microgrids. ASML’s Wayne Allan confirmed the company had established a legal entity in India and was setting up local customer support, framing sustained government commitment as the clearest signal multinational equipment makers had received to date.
Day Three Confronted the Talent Gap
The final day turned to workforce scaling, arguably the summit’s least glamorous but most consequential theme. MeitY Secretary S Krishnan pointed out that while India already supplies nearly 20% of the world’s fabless chip design workforce, it has historically lacked cleanroom-trained production technicians, prompting a government plan to train 100,000 such workers over five years in partnership with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute. Vaishnaw separately noted that 85,000 chip design engineers had already been trained against a ten-year target, while Tata Electronics confirmed 300 Indian graduates were currently training at Powerchip Semiconductor’s Taiwan facilities ahead of staffing Dholera.
SEMI India’s Ashok Chandak offered perhaps the summit’s most useful framing device, describing India’s progress through four stages: Credibility, established by five back-end plants now shipping real chips; Capability, the current phase of expanding packaging and fab capacity; and the Commitment and Continuity still required to sustain the momentum. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri added a geopolitical dimension, arguing that genuine self-reliance does not require full vertical integration, but rather sovereign strength in high-leverage nodes like fabless design and advanced packaging.
Semicon 2.0 Is a Different Animal From Phase One
The scheme underpinning much of this activity has evolved substantially. Semicon 1.0, launched in December 2021 with a ₹76,000 crore outlay, fully committed its budget within three years and helped bring five back-end facilities into commercial production. Semicon 2.0 nearly doubles that outlay to ₹1,27,500 crore, restructures capital subsidies for front-end fabs down to 25% to 40% from a uniform 50%, and redirects the freed funds toward localising equipment, specialty gases and chemicals, sectors where India currently imports over 90% of tools and 85% to 90% of process chemicals.
What Remains Genuinely Unresolved
Several structural gaps persist beneath the summit’s optimism. The headline ₹1 lakh crore figure remains non-binding investment interest, not board-approved capital, and its conversion into ground-broken facilities depends heavily on state-level infrastructure delivery. India’s flagship front-end fab, the Tata-PSMC Dholera facility, is not expected to produce commercial wafers until roughly 2028, leaving domestic packaging plants dependent on imported silicon in the interim. On the startup front, only 20 of the 105 chip design companies supported under Semicon 1.0 managed to raise meaningful venture capital, raising real questions about whether the expanded 200-startup target under Semicon 2.0 can attract sufficient private funding rather than relying primarily on government incentives.
What to Watch Next
Over the coming 6 to 18 months, the clearest signals of progress will come from tracking how much of the ₹1 lakh crore in interest converts into formal Cabinet approvals and land allotments, whether Fujifilm’s planned chemical plant near Dholera and Applied Materials’ research park actually break ground, and whether the ChipIN programme can onboard meaningfully more design startups with successful tape-outs. Export volumes of packaged chips from Micron, CG Semi, Suchi and CDIL will offer perhaps the most concrete test of whether SEMICON India 2026’s declared shift from files to factories holds up under scrutiny.
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