At the centre of the strategy is a Rs 76,000-crore semiconductor incentive programme that offers to fund up to 50 per cent of project costs, alongside a cluster of announced fabrication and packaging projects led by Tata Electronics and global partners.

The flagship proposal is Tata Electronics' planned 28-nanometre logic fab at Dholera, Gujarat, being developed with Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (PSMC). The project is intended to anchor a broader ecosystem that includes assembly, testing and packaging facilities-often referred to as OSAT or ATMP-such as Micron Technology's facility in Sanand and packaging ventures involving Tata-PSMC and CG Power with Japan's Renesas.

'The moment may lie in legacy chips'

Together, these projects mark India's most serious attempt yet to move beyond chip design and electronics assembly into semiconductor manufacturing itself. Policymakers argue that India's large and fast-growing electronics market, combined with geopolitical supply-chain diversification, gives the country a narrow window to attract investment that might otherwise flow to Taiwan, South Korea, the United States or China.

That logic underpins New Delhi's emphasis on OSAT and mature-node fabrication as stepping stones rather than end goals. India already accounts for a significant share of the global semiconductor design workforce, and policymakers see manufacturing as a way to connect design talent with production experience over time.

Still, investors and analysts stress that execution will matter more than announcements. Semiconductor firms are highly sensitive to regulatory uncertainty, infrastructure reliability and policy reversals. As Ezell's assessment notes, multinational manufacturers prioritise stability and predictability when committing billions of dollars to long-lived assets.