India just made its boldest long-term technology bet yet: a 10-year roadmap to build a $120-150 billion semiconductor value chain by 2035, released by NITI Aayog’s Frontier Tech Hub and unveiled alongside the Finance Minister and Electronics and IT Minister.
What makes this roadmap notable isn’t the dollar figure. It’s the strategy behind it.
Skipping the leading-edge race, on purpose
India isn’t trying to out-build TSMC or Samsung at the bleeding edge. The roadmap deliberately avoids chasing sub-2nm fabrication and instead targets advanced packaging and OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) as the near-term opportunity. As chip architectures grow more complex, packaging is becoming nearly as important as fabrication itself in determining system performance, and India sees this as a segment where it can build scale faster.
Alongside packaging, the roadmap leans into compound and wide-bandgap semiconductors (think silicon carbide and gallium nitride) for EVs, renewable energy systems, telecom infrastructure, and defense applications. These are growth markets where the competitive field is far less crowded than leading-edge logic chips.
Design is where India already leads
India hosts roughly 20% of the global semiconductor design workforce and is home to R&D centers for companies like Intel, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. The roadmap aims to convert that talent base into domestic IP ownership, targeting over 100 advanced semiconductor design IPs created within the country. That’s a shift from supplying engineering talent to global chipmakers toward owning the intellectual property itself.
The numbers behind the ambition
- India currently imports 90-95% of the semiconductors it consumes
- That import bill could grow to $240B annually by 2035 if nothing changes
- India’s domestic chip market is projected to hit $200B by 2035
- An estimated $135-180B in growth capital is needed over the next decade to build out fabs, design infrastructure, and packaging capacity
This isn’t a story about chasing investment headlines. It’s described internally as a shift from “ecosystem creation to ecosystem deepening,” meaning the focus now is converting existing momentum (ISM 1.0’s fabs and packaging plants already under construction in Gujarat, Assam, Rajasthan, and Odisha) into durable, self-sustaining capability.
Why this matters beyond India
- Trusted-partner positioning: As global supply chains diversify away from concentrated risk in East Asia, India’s OSAT push positions it as a credible back-end partner for chipmakers looking to de-risk packaging and testing capacity.
- EV and clean energy supply chains gain a new node: Wide-bandgap semiconductor capacity feeds directly into EV powertrains and renewable energy systems, areas where demand is scaling fast globally.
- Design IP ownership changes the value capture: Moving from engineering-services talent to owned IP shifts where economic value sits, not just where work gets done.
- Long-cycle commitment, not a sprint: Officials behind the roadmap are explicit that semiconductor leadership in 2035 has to be planned and built today. This is a decade-long bet, and the near-term milestones (OSAT capacity, design IP counts) are the metrics worth tracking along the way.
Bottom line
India isn’t trying to win the chip race everyone else is already running. It’s choosing a different lane, packaging, compound semiconductors, and design IP, where its existing strengths in talent and electronics manufacturing give it a genuine head start. Whether that translates into the targeted $150B value chain by 2035 will depend on sustained capital, policy follow-through, and how quickly OSAT capacity actually comes online.
