India’s first homegrown chip: Joining the global race?

India’s manufacturing sector is preparing for a leap into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where factories are powered by artificial intelligence, robotics, 5G, and automation. At the center of this transformation lie semiconductors, the critical building blocks of modern electronics. By the end of 2025, India is expected to produce its first homegrown chip. But the road ahead is complex and filled with challenges.

The Skill and Scale Challenge

Sunil Vachani, Chairman of Dixon Technologies, argues that India’s success will depend on how quickly it can build both talent and scale. “We need to skill a large number of people… We need to be doing our own components. We design our own products and we skill a massive amount of people so that a large ecosystem develops and we don’t have to depend on anybody else,” Vachani says.

The example he points to is Apple’s supplier ecosystem in China, which created millions of jobs and a self-sustaining industrial base. India, he suggests, needs its own version of this playbook.

Lessons From Asia’s Rise

India is not the first country to attempt this shift. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China all followed a similar path: scale up manufacturing, build strong supply chains, and gradually climb the value chain into advanced technologies. Each invested heavily in workforce skills and component manufacturing.

The question is whether India can compress this decades-long journey into just a few years, while global supply chains are already in flux.

Lost Chances, Second Chances

Vachani points out that India already missed one major opportunity when companies began adopting the “China plus one” strategy during Donald Trump’s presidency. “That time, India was sitting on a large opportunity but we really lost that race to Vietnam. The important thing is now that this opportunity has come to us, we should not miss the bus this time,” he warns.

A Narrow Window

India has an opening, but the window is not indefinite. The next few years will determine whether the country becomes a serious player in global electronics manufacturing or remains dependent on imports.

For more, catch the full conversation with Sunil Vachani on The India Story with Vikram Chandra.