New Delhi: On September 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate SEMICON India 2026 at Yashobhoomi in Dwarka, New Delhi. Global chipmakers, policymakers and investors will gather at the venue as India puts its rapidly developing semiconductor ecosystem on display.
Over three days, the country’s semiconductor manufacturing story will take centre stage. For an industry that had only a limited presence in India a decade ago, the event is more than a conference. It represents a moment when India’s semiconductor ambitions move firmly into the global spotlight.
The theme of SEMICON India 2026 is “Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem.” The phrase captures the shift in India’s ambition. The question is no longer simply whether India can make chips, but how quickly it can build the wider ecosystem needed to design, manufacture, package, test and deploy them.
SEMICON India 2026: At a Glance
- 7X Growth: Electronics production increased from ₹1.9 lakh crore (2014–15) to ₹13.11 lakh crore (2025–26).
- ₹1.64 Lakh Crore Investment: 12 semiconductor projects approved across 6 states.
- 3 Facilities Operational: Three semiconductor facilities are already in commercial production.
- 68,000+ Students Trained: Over 68,000 students trained under the Chips to Startup (C2S) programme.
- 211 Chips Taped Out: 75 institutions had taped out 211 chips by April 2026.
- India’s Chip Push: From making electronics to manufacturing the chips that power them, India is building a complete semiconductor ecosystem.
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The Object That Runs the World
Hold up a smartphone and somewhere inside it is a piece of silicon smaller than a postage stamp, carrying billions of transistors that switch on and off billions of times every second.
Apple’s A19 Bionic chip, built using a 3-nanometre process, packs roughly 30 billion transistors onto that tiny surface. It is, without exaggeration, one of the most complex objects ever built by humans.
Chips are no longer a niche product. They are embedded in cars, drones, aeroplanes, MRI machines and satellites. The global electronics industry is currently valued at around $4.3 trillion and continues to expand rapidly.
Semiconductors sit at the foundation of this growing structure. From automobiles and healthcare to defence and telecommunications, industries across the economy depend on what emerges from semiconductor fabrication plants. That is what makes semiconductors a foundational industry. If this layer is fragile, every industry built above it becomes vulnerable.
The world experienced this vulnerability first-hand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Car factories faced shutdowns not because of a shortage of steel or labour, but because manufacturers could not secure enough semiconductor chips.
Countries that had spent decades treating semiconductors as someone else’s problem suddenly began scrambling to develop domestic capacity. The pandemic did not create the global race for chips. It simply forced everyone to run faster.
A Long Road to This Moment
India’s interest in semiconductors goes back decades, through quiet attempts, small beginnings and lessons learned the hard way. For years, the ambition existed, but the ecosystem needed to support semiconductor manufacturing never fully came together.
That began to change with a different approach. Reforms in foreign investment, taxation and customs helped open the manufacturing environment, while global electronics companies gradually expanded their production presence in India. The results have been significant.
In 2014-15, India produced around ₹1.9 lakh crore worth of electronics goods. By 2025-26, production had reached ₹13.11 lakh crore, representing a sevenfold increase.
Electronics exports rose from around ₹38,000 crore to ₹4.24 lakh crore, an elevenfold increase during the same period.
Mobile phones tell an even sharper story.
Mobile phone production rose 33 times, from ₹18,000 crore to ₹6.27 lakh crore. Exports increased 165 times, from around ₹1,500 crore to ₹2.59 lakh crore.
Smartphones did not feature among India’s top 100 exported goods in 2014. By FY 2025-26, smartphones had become India’s single largest exported commodity, ahead of petroleum products as well as gems and jewellery.
India now manufactures 99.2 per cent of the mobile phones it uses and has moved from being a net importer of mobiles to a net exporter. The entire manufacturing ecosystem now supports around 2.5 million jobs.
This is where the larger picture begins to shift. A country once associated with repeated false starts in electronics is now the world’s second-largest mobile phone manufacturer by volume.
Electronics manufacturing provided the proof of concept. Semiconductors were the next logical step.
Building the Semiconductor Mission
That next step arrived in 2021 with the Semicon India programme.
The strategy was deliberate: build a genuine ecosystem rather than a standalone showcase project.
Semicon 1.0 came with an outlay of ₹76,000 crore and covered the semiconductor value chain, from chip design and fabrication to packaging, testing, equipment, materials and skilled talent.
In July 2026, the government approved Semicon 2.0, expanding this foundation with an outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore.
The programme is built around six pillars: chip design; semiconductor equipment and materials; fabrication facilities; advanced packaging; research and development; and talent development.
The numbers on the ground increasingly reflect this ambition.
Twelve semiconductor projects have been approved across six states, with investment commitments exceeding ₹1.64 lakh crore. These projects span silicon and compound semiconductor fabs, display fabrication and advanced packaging.
Three facilities have already started commercial production.
That marks an important transition for India: semiconductor manufacturing is moving from policy documents and investment announcements to actual production on the ground.
Growing the Talent Behind the Chips
A semiconductor fab is only as strong as the engineers who design what goes inside it. India has therefore placed considerable emphasis on developing the talent required to sustain the industry.
The target is to build a pool of 85,000 skilled semiconductor engineers within this decade.
Through the Chips to Startup programme, Electronic Design Automation tools have already been deployed across 320 academic institutions, with more than 68,000 students trained so far.
Separately, 24 semiconductor design projects have been approved for 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. This indicates that chip-design capabilities are spreading beyond a small group of elite laboratories.
Seven of these chips have already been fabricated at various nodes, including advanced nodes down to 12 nanometres.
To further democratise chip design across the country, the ChipIN Centre has been established at C-DAC under the Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme and the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme.
The centre functions as a centralised national facility providing access to advanced chip-design tools, fabrication services and specialised training.
Its reach has extended to more than 1 lakh engineers from over 500 organisations, including 400 academic institutions and 100 start-ups.
These organisations have collectively developed more than 300 chip designs for fabrication at SCL, Mohali, and advanced foundries abroad. They have also recorded more than 4 crore hours of chip-design tool usage.
By providing shared access to otherwise capital-intensive tools and services, the initiative has lowered entry barriers, reduced development costs and accelerated chip innovation. It has also created the world’s largest user base for a centralised chip-design facility.
An Alliance for the Chip Age
India’s semiconductor push is no longer confined to its domestic manufacturing ambitions.
On the fifth day of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, India formally joined the Pax Silica coalition.
The coalition brings together the United States and other partner nations with a focus on securing the global silicon supply chain.
Its objective is to secure the full “silicon stack” — from critical minerals and semiconductor fabrication to advanced AI systems and deployment infrastructure.
The larger mission is to prevent critical supply chains from becoming concentrated in too few hands, resist economic coercion and ensure that technologies shaping the 21st century remain in the hands of open and democratic nations.
For India, participation in the coalition signals that its semiconductor ambitions are increasingly connected to the wider global technology and supply-chain landscape.
Where It All Meets
This is what makes SEMICON India 2026 more than an exhibition.
Over three days at Yashobhoomi, more than 600 exhibitors and 300 international companies will participate across 15,000 square metres of exhibition space. More than 150 renowned speakers will share knowledge and insights.
Six country pavilions and 12 state pavilions will sit alongside a startup showcase, student hackathon, workforce development pavilion and Women Forum.
Each element represents a different part of the semiconductor ecosystem India has been building over the past five years.
A chip can take years to design and months to fabricate, but its footprint lasts much longer. It ends up inside the phone in your hand, the car on the road, the medical equipment in a hospital and the systems used in critical infrastructure.
Every one of these devices depends on someone, somewhere, having built that chip first.
SEMICON India 2026 is India’s declaration that it intends to be that someone. Not tomorrow, Starting now.
