A fresh report launched at SEMICON India 2026 charts India's path to becoming a globally competitive semiconductor hub, backed by surging demand, deep engineering talent and untapped intellectual-property potential.
India's semiconductor demand is on track to nearly double within five years, according to a new report unveiled at SEMICON India 2026 by KPMG in India, the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) and Nishith Desai Associates (NDA). Titled India's Semiconductor Opportunity: Building a Globally Competitive Ecosystem, the report lays out a roadmap for turning the country's current momentum into lasting global competitiveness.
The findings arrive a year after IDTA launched at SEMICON India 2025 to funnel private capital and technical expertise into India's deep-tech sector — and this report goes further, taking a sweeping, full-chain look at what it will actually take for India to compete on the world stage.
Demand set to surge past $90 billion
The numbers tell a striking story: India's semiconductor demand is projected to jump from roughly USD 44 billion in 2025-26 to nearly USD 90 billion by 2029-30. Driving that surge? Mobile phones and wearables, which alone are expected to account for close to USD 42.13 billion of demand by the decade's end.
But the report is clear-eyed that fabrication alone won't cut it. India, it argues, must simultaneously build strength in design, advanced packaging, equipment, materials, R&D and talent — with a sharp focus on creating and commercialising homegrown intellectual property.
A patent boom — with glaring gaps
Digging into a decade of patent data through June 2026, the report uncovers both promise and vulnerability. India has racked up roughly 78,000 published patent applications and 28,000 grants, with semiconductor accelerators dominating at 92 per cent of filings. Yet the filing race is largely being won by global corporate research centres — IIT Madras is the lone academic institution to crack the top ten.
More worrying: patents in advanced packaging, high-bandwidth memory and chiplets — technologies in short supply worldwide — remain thin on the ground in India. The report is banking on the Semicon 2.0 push into assembly, testing and packaging to close that gap. It also sounds an alarm on India's legal framework, pointing to the absence of a dedicated trade secrets law as a real risk for a country courting serious design and manufacturing investment.
The prescription? A phased build-out — double down on India's existing design and packaging strengths now, develop mature-node and compound-semiconductor fabrication next, and set sights on advanced-node chips, AI accelerators and high-performance computing for the long haul.
"India's semiconductor opportunity is no longer simply about whether the country can participate in the global semiconductor industry; it is about how rapidly and how deeply we can build capabilities that are globally competitive," said Arun Kumar, Executive Committee's Chair, India Deep Tech Alliance. "That requires looking beyond individual projects to the entire ecosystem. This report seeks to identify the building blocks needed to convert India's current momentum into enduring competitive advantage."
Akhilesh Tuteja, Partner & National Leader - Clients and Markets, KPMG in India, called semiconductors "a cornerstone of technological sovereignty, economic resilience and national competitiveness," adding that India has "a unique opportunity to translate its strengths in talent, innovation and manufacturing into lasting strategic advantage."
Nishith Desai, Founder, Nishith Desai Associates, struck a similar note: "India has built formidable strength in chip design and engineering talent; the next step is to translate that strength into globally valuable, India-owned intellectual property."
With demand set to nearly double and the clock ticking, the report's message is unambiguous — India's semiconductor moment is now, but capitalising on it will take coordinated action across government, industry and academia alike.
