India’s first commercial chip fab is taking shape in Dholera, Gujarat — ASML and Tata Electronics have signed a deal to equip the $11 billion facility, which targets 50,000 wafers a month when fully operational.
ASML and Tata Electronics have signed an MOU to put ASML’s lithography equipment inside the Dholera fab — a 300mm facility going up in Gujarat that represents India’s first real shot at front-end semiconductor manufacturing.
The signing happened during PM Modi’s visit to the Netherlands, with Dutch PM Rob Jetten in the room. The plant has $11 billion behind it, with India’s government picking up half the eligible costs through the India Semiconductor Mission. Gujarat is throwing in subsidized land, lower power tariffs, and stamp duty breaks on top of that.
Taiwan’s PSMC is handling the process technology — 28nm down to 110nm — and helped design the facility. At full tilt, the fab is meant to push out 50,000 wafers a month: power management chips, display drivers, microcontrollers, and HPC logic for cars, mobile, and AI.
Construction is about halfway done, though the project hit a snag last year when soil testing found the ground too soft and salty for the original foundation design. They had to go back to the drawing board structurally, but Tata says it didn’t push back the timeline. Trial production is still on for later this year.
India currently has zero front-end fab capacity — Micron runs an assembly and test site nearby in Sanand, but that’s packaging, not wafers. Dholera is the only commercial foundry project in the country.