Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces ambitious plans to establish five to eight semiconductor plants in India over the next seven to eight years, aiming to bolster self-reliance and integrate advanced chipmaking into the nation’s industrial growth.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India is on track to bring between five and eight semiconductor plants into production over the next seven to eight years, casting chipmaking as a central plank of the country’s drive for self-reliance. He made the comments in his Independence Day address from the Red Fort, tying the build-out of domestic manufacturing to the wider ambitions of Atmanirbhar Bharat and the long-term goal of Viksit Bharat.
Modi said three major chip plants are already operating and will also serve export markets. That push builds on a wider government plan to move the country beyond basic assembly work and towards more advanced fabrication. Business Standard reported earlier that the Centre has mapped out a five- to seven-year roadmap for 7-nanometre chip production, with IBM and IMEC involved in the technology effort, while Tata Group is setting up the country’s first wafer fab, initially focused on 28-nanometre chips and above.
The industry’s near-term pipeline is also gathering pace. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the electronics and information technology minister, has said five semiconductor fabrication units should be running by the end of 2026, including the Sanand facility, which would be the third of the 12 projects approved under the India Semiconductor Mission to enter commercial production. Separate reports this year said Modi inaugurated Micron’s assembly, testing, marking and packaging plant in Sanand and laid the foundation stone for an HCL-Foxconn unit in Uttar Pradesh.
In his speech, Modi used the semiconductor push to underline how much India’s industrial base has expanded over the past 12 years. He cited sharp rises in defence output, khadi and village industries, electronics manufacturing, railway coach production and mobile phone production, arguing that the country has entered a faster phase of growth after years of caution. He also recalled that India was once grouped among the world’s “Fragile Five” economies, saying the country has since moved beyond that label.
Energy security was the other major theme of the address. Modi said India is aiming for 200 GW of nuclear energy and is developing five new reactors, while noting progress in fast breeder nuclear technology, which he presented as an important step towards fuel self-reliance. He also said piped gas now reaches 1.75 crore households and solar energy covers more than 50 lakh homes. Taken together, the semiconductor and nuclear programmes were presented as part of a broader effort to reduce dependence on foreign technology and strengthen the foundations of India’s next phase of growth.
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