The fabs are coming. The silicon is still mostly imported. A quiet shift from diplomatic dialogue to joint engineering projects could gradually change the flow of events.
As India’s semiconductor ambitions are gathering momentum, billion-dollar fabrication plants are being announced, government incentive schemes are rolling out, and chips have entered the political vocabulary as a strategic priority. But behind the progress lies an untold reality: India does not yet produce its own silicon wafers at commercial scale.
‘No wafer, no chip.’ The situation is not a crisis but a gap that has begun to attract the attention of engineers, policymakers, and potential partners overseas.
A silicon wafer is the polished disc on which semiconductor circuits are built. At present, most wafers expected to feed India’s upcoming fabs will be imported, largely from established producers in East Asia. While sufficient under current conditions, this reliance highlights a broader question of long-term supply chain resilience and how deeply integrated India’s semiconductor ecosystem can eventually become.
The question of how to close this gap surfaced recently at an Indo-German semiconductor dialogue (GIIC) at IIT Delhi, where industry leaders and applied research institutions reviewed opportunities for collaboration across the semiconductor value chain. The tone was constructive, with a recurring emphasis on moving beyond discussions toward hands-on engineering work.
Rana Semiconductors develops crystal growth equipment based on the Czochralski process, a method first demonstrated in a German laboratory a century ago. Over the past seven years, the company has built the capability to produce four-inch and six-inch silicon ingots. Scaling to twelve-inch wafers, the industry standard for modern fabs, is expected to require several more years of sustained effort. The work highlights how strategic materials are managed in countries such as Japan, where long-term frameworks guide the supply of critical semiconductor inputs.
Rajasekhar Albersaran, Founder, Rana Semiconductors, underscored the importance of upstream readiness in semiconductor manufacturing, noting, “If there is no wafer one day, the fab has nothing to print on. We have spent seven years building indigenous crystal-growth equipment. We estimate that it will take four more years to reach commercially viable 12-inch wafers. The clock is running.”
The technical pathway to wafers runs through crystal growth, a capital-intensive process that produces single-crystal silicon ingots which are later sliced into wafers. While still in its early stages in India, existing efforts indicate a foundational capability that will require sustained investment and institutional focus to scale.
This is where Indo-German cooperation becomes relevant. Germany’s Fraunhofer network brings strong expertise in crystal growth, power electronics, and compound semiconductors, while India offers engineering scale, industrial ambition, and a large domestic market seeking supply chain diversification.
However, collaboration has so far remained largely at the level of intent.
Anandi Iyer, Head of Fraunhofer India, described the gap clearly: “The collaboration is heavily rhetorical. It is about MoUs, conferences, dialogues and discussions. But it has not translated into developing pilot projects that demonstrate what we can build together.”
She pointed to the need for focused pilot initiatives in areas such as silicon carbide or gallium nitride wafers, or jointly developed prototyping facilities, to shift cooperation from dialogue to execution.
Such efforts would likely focus on niche technologies where both sides can contribute without having to rebuild entire value chains independently. Germany would bring process expertise and quality control strength, while India would contribute scale potential and market demand.
The idea is still evolving, but the direction is increasingly toward time-bound joint programmes that can demonstrate on-the-ground outcomes. Over time, these could serve as early building blocks of a more distributed global semiconductor supply chain, with additional nodes beyond existing hubs.
The timeline is becoming tighter. India’s upcoming fabs are expected to require wafer supplies within the next few years. Continued dependence on imports is not a disruption risk in itself, but it does leave a foundational layer of the ecosystem outside domestic control.
The shift ahead is therefore less about announcements and more about execution at the materials level, from dialogue to crystal growth and eventually to production scale capability.
