India must move beyond semiconductor engineering to own products, capture innovation value: Infosys' Vikram Meghal

New Delhi: India needs to move beyond semiconductor engineering and focus on owning entire products and capturing greater innovation value as the country enters a "once in a generation demand window", Vikram Meghal, Senior Vice President and Service Offering Head, Infosys, said at SEMICON India 2026.

Meghal said India had an opportunity to emerge as an innovation and engineering hub for the world by building on its existing semiconductor and engineering capabilities.

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"So far we have just been capturing the engineered in India value. Now there is a potential for global products to capture the innovation value and start looking at invent in India itself," he said.

He identified three major opportunities for India - products made for the domestic market, engineering services for global companies and developing global products in India.

The market for phones in India is expected to increase by USD 80 billion over the next four to five years, while domestic content in phones currently stands at 23 per cent, Meghal said. He added that there was scope to increase this by focusing on the entire product rather than only individual components.

He also pointed to rising demand for medical devices, with consumption expected to increase from USD 14 billion to USD 50 billion, while engineering, research and development spending is expected to rise 1.8 times from current levels in the coming years.

Meghal said global product development itself is expected to grow from USD 67 billion to USD 200 billion, creating an opportunity for India to capture a larger share of the value generated from innovation.

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"The simple idea is how can we make India the innovation and engineering hub for the world?" he said.

He stressed that the industry must adopt a broader product mindset, moving beyond individual chips to complete systems and products. This would require system-level thinking, product strategy and the ability to drive product monetisation.

Meghal also flagged regulatory compliance as an important requirement as Indian companies move from chips to systems and products for global markets.

Further, he said the next decade should focus on converting India's existing capabilities into ownership of outcomes and products.

"The next decade should be about converting this capability into ownership, ownership of outcomes, ownership of the product itself, rather than just looking at a chip as an outcome," he said.

He called for "strategic patience" to take a few large bets and invest for the long term, along with a stronger global ecosystem, saying this could help India achieve higher value capture.