Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: In a stretch of Gujarat’s coastal plain, a factory the size of a small township is closing in on a milestone the country has chased for decades. India’s first commercial semiconductor fabrication plant — built at Dholera by Tata Electronics with Taiwan’s Powerchip (PSMC) at a cost of about ₹91,000 crore — is on course to roll out its first Made-in-India chip by the end of 2026, the government has said. The debut will be a 28-nanometre chip, a mature, workhorse node that runs cars, phones, appliances and industrial machines the world over. It is not the most advanced silicon on earth, and that is exactly the sensible place for a new entrant to begin.
The ambition is industrial, not merely symbolic. The Dholera fab is designed for up to 50,000 wafers a month, with power-management and logic chips aimed at electric vehicles, telecom, defence, consumer electronics and displays — the very devices Indian factories increasingly assemble. Alongside it, an assembly-and-test plant at Sanand and a clutch of other projects under the India Semiconductor Mission are building the packaging, materials and skilled-workforce layers that a chip industry needs. A single fab does not make a semiconductor power; a connected ecosystem, patiently assembled, begins to.
Starting at the workhorse node: Dholera’s first chip is set to be a 28nm device — the mature silicon that runs cars, appliances and industrial machines — with capacity designed for up to 50,000 wafers a month.
You do not learn to make chips by making the hardest one first. You learn by making a useful one, reliably, and then climbing.
At a Glance
• Plant: Tata Electronics–PSMC fab at Dholera, Gujarat; ~₹91,000 cr
• First chip: 28nm node, targeted by end-2026
• Capacity: designed for up to 50,000 wafers a month
• Uses: power-management and logic chips for EVs, telecom, auto, electronics
Why does a single node of silicon carry such weight? Because chips are the grain of the modern economy, and India has until now imported almost all of them — a dependence exposed painfully when a global shortage idled the country’s own car and electronics lines a few years ago. Making even mature chips at home shortens that supply chain, anchors high-value manufacturing and the skilled jobs around it, and gives Indian device-makers a domestic source for the components they currently ship in. The strategic logic is the same one behind refineries and steel mills a generation ago: make the essential input, and you strengthen everything built on top of it.
The honest account names the hard part: fabs are unforgiving, and first yields — the share of good chips on each wafer — take time to climb to commercial levels, while the leading edge keeps moving. The constructive read is that India is sequencing this the right way: begin at a proven node with a world-class partner, build the assembly, talent and materials base in parallel, and let capability compound. The way forward is execution discipline — hit the first-chip milestone, grind up the yield curve, and widen the ecosystem — so that “designed in India” is steadily joined by “made in India,” one wafer at a time.
