India to Make First Commercial Chip Using IIT-developed Designs

• First commercial-scale “Made-in-India” chip due in late 2025/early 2026.
• IIT students designed 20 chipsets; eight taped-out for fabrication.
• Nationwide EDA rollout + fabs under development to build full chip-making ecosystem.

According to Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated that India is on track to manufacture its first commercial-scale semiconductor chip by late 2025 or early 2026 (the IIT Hyderabad convocation was a great opportunity to celebrate the contribution of Indian engineer), marking a significant milestone in its journey to establish a self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem (Reddit, AInvest).

Students of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have designed 20 chipsets, eight of which have already been taped-out (the last step before fabrication) and sent for manufacturing to global foundries and the Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) in Mohali.

This is reflective of the increasing maturity of India’s chip-design talent pool driven by the India Semiconductor Mission.

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To facilitate this momentum, the government has ensured that 270 colleges and 70 startups now have access to state of the art Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. At IIT Hyderabad alone, more than 700 students have done over 300,000 hours of chip design work in just six months. Further, the AIKosh platform has over 880 open source datasets and over 200 AI models available to students, researchers, and startups.

India currently has six semiconductor fabs either approved or in development. Although SCL Mohali is still developing legacy processes, the new fabs, including the first commercial foundry to be set up in the State of Gujarat, are likely to be far more supportive of large-scale production and place India in the top five semiconductor nations in the world in years to come.

The semiconductor push is part of a general growth in electronics: India's electronics exports have crossed 40 billion dollars, representing an eight-fold increase and double-digit Compound Annual Growth Rate over the past 11 years.