India Is Now Exporting Chips — And the PM Put the Next Five to Eight Plants Seven Years Out
From the Red Fort on August 15, 2026, the Prime Minister said three semiconductor plants have started production and their output has begun to be exported — moving the claim past "making chips" for the first time. He also said another five to eight plants are expected to become operational over the next seven to eight years.
The three operating facilities are Micron’s ATMP plant at Sanand, inaugurated 28 February 2026 and shipping DRAM and NAND memory modules; Kaynes Semicon’s OSAT facility at Sanand, inaugurated 31 March 2026; and CG Semi’s OSAT plant, inaugurated 4 July 2026. At the Kaynes inauguration in March, the Prime Minister noted that chips from Sanand would reach the United States and that a large part of the plant’s production was already booked.
Twelve manufacturing units are approved under Semicon 1.0 with cumulative investment above ₹1.64 lakh crore — one silicon fab, one silicon carbide fab, one gallium nitride Micro LED display fab, and nine packaging units. Semicon 2.0 was approved on 15 July 2026 with an outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore.
Exporting packaged chips is a real step beyond producing them, and it is the strongest single data point the programme has generated. It is worth registering plainly before anything else.
The second half of the statement deserves equal attention. Five to eight further plants over seven to eight years is a more measured timeline than twelve-approved suggests — and the facilities in that pipeline are overwhelmingly ATMP and OSAT, not wafer fabs. That distinction is the difference between assembling the world’s chips and making them. It is also, precisely, where the workforce demand sits: assembly, test, packaging and equipment maintenance roles, hired locally, in volume, at facilities that will come online across a seven-year window. Institutions planning programmes should size to that curve rather than to the announcement.