India's Semiconductor Ecosystem
Design Strength and Manufacturing Gap
India presents a paradox in global semiconductors: it contributes approximately 20% of the world's chip design engineers and houses R&D centres of global leaders (Qualcomm, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, ARM) in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune — yet it manufactures virtually no semiconductors domestically. ISM 2.0 attempts to leverage this design strength to build an indigenous chip industry.
- Fabless design model: Companies like Qualcomm, AMD, Nvidia, and Apple design chips but outsource manufacturing to foundries (TSMC, Samsung Foundry); this model requires design talent and IP but not capital-intensive fabs
- India's fabless companies: A growing number of Indian startups and companies operate in chip design — Saankhya Labs (wireless SoCs), Ola Electric's chip team, InCore Semiconductors, ScALED, and others
- Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme: Provides financial support (up to ₹15 crore per company for product design), design infrastructure access (EDA tools, IP libraries), and market launch support; targets 100 domestic companies designing semiconductors over 5 years
- Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools: Software used for chip design (Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics); India's access to advanced EDA tools has been a bottleneck; ISM 2.0 aims to ease this
- Chip-to-fab linkage: ISM 2.0 envisions Indian-designed chips being manufactured in ISM 1.0-approved fabs (Tata Electronics' Dholera fab, Micron's Sanand ATMP) — creating an integrated domestic semiconductor ecosystem
● Tracked since March 01, 2026 · last seen July 02, 2026 · updates as the daily brief publishes
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