India is about to join a very exclusive club. Tata Electronics is building the country’s first commercial semiconductor fabrication plant, a $11 billion facility in Dholera, Gujarat, that aims to start producing silicon by December 2026.

The plant won’t be cranking out cutting-edge 3 nm chips for the latest iPhones. Instead, it’s targeting mature process nodes between 28 nm and 110 nm. These are the chips that power everything from cars to power management systems to IoT devices.

What Tata is actually building

The Dholera facility is designed to produce 300 mm semiconductor wafers at a planned capacity of 50,000 wafers per month. Tata Electronics partnered with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) for the technology transfer, which was completed in September 2024.

In May 2026, Tata signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ASML, the Dutch company that holds a near-monopoly on advanced lithography equipment. That deal covers plant setup, production ramp-up, and talent development.

The target applications tell the story: automotive chips, AI components, IoT devices, power management ICs, and display drivers.

The total investment of approximately $11 billion, or roughly Rs 91,000 crore, makes this one of the largest single industrial projects in Indian history. It’s part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the government’s broader push to reduce dependence on foreign chip manufacturing.

The bigger picture for global supply chains

The government’s plan calls for multiple semiconductor plants to enter commercial production in 2026, suggesting Dholera is the beginning of a larger buildout.

If Tata hits its December 2026 first-silicon target, commercial production would follow shortly after. Samsung, GlobalFoundries, and UMC all operate significant mature-node capacity. Tata entering this market with 50,000 wafers per month won’t threaten their dominance immediately, but it creates pricing pressure and supply alternatives that didn’t exist before.