For a long time, “Digital India” ran on chips made everywhere except India.
Our phones, cars, servers, medical devices, and even the most everyday appliances depend on semiconductors. Yet India has historically been a buyer, not a maker. Official and industry-facing assessments have noted that India has imported the vast majority of its semiconductor needs (often cited at ~95%). And in FY 2023–24 alone, India imported semiconductor chips worth about ₹1.71 lakh crore-money leaving the country for a component that sits at the heart of every “smart” product.
That dependence isn’t just an economic issue; it’s strategic. When supply chains tighten or foreign forces-from geopolitics to export controls-reshape access, “foreign-made” can quickly become “foreign-controlled.” Old India had to live with that reality. Vikasit Bharat won’t.
India’s semiconductor push became structured with the Cabinet-approved Semicon India Programme / India Semiconductor Mission in December 2021, backed by an incentive outlay of ₹76,000 crore and fiscal support of up to 50% for fabs, packaging/ATMP/OSAT, compound semiconductors, and chip design. The demand story makes this urgent: the government has cited industry estimates that India’s semiconductor market was ~$45–50B in 2024–25 and could reach ~$100–110B by 2030.
The momentum is no longer theoretical: by December 2025, the government said 10 projects (across 6 states) with a total investment of around ₹1.60 lakh crore had been approved.
A few moments stand out:
Semiconductors are an ecosystem game: materials, chemicals, equipment, talent, R&D, and global linkages. That’s why the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme focuses on building Indian IP-supporting chip design from development to deployment, alongside shared design infrastructure. And ISM 2.0 is being positioned to deepen this pipeline via talent, startups, and equipment design/manufacturing capacity.
India is also actively engaging global partners, from U.S. equipment investments to outreach in Europe’s chip hubs, to plug into the world’s most advanced know-how while building at home.
We’re not claiming overnight self-sufficiency. But we are building something India has never built at scale before: a credible, end-to-end semiconductor runway.
Old India imported vulnerability. Vikasit Bharat is investing in capability-so the next wave of innovation is not just “used in India,” but increasingly “made in India.” And that’s a quiet, confident national pride-built one design, one package, one wafer at a time.
