Semiconductor ecosystem: Made in India and designed for India

The government’s new Rs 62,500 crore mobile manufacturing scheme, notified recently, recognises that India’s electronics ambitions cannot be built on manufacturing alone. Spread over five years, the scheme aims to increase mobile phone manufacturing in the country and nurture Indian mobile phone brands. That second objective is particularly important.

After earlier Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes boosted a lot of global manufacturing, the new initiative explicitly supports Indian mobile brands, signalling a decisive shift from assembling products for others to building globally competitive desi brands. Even China first started assembling devices for global companies before creating brands such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei.

Unless India creates products that generate domestic demand for locally designed chips, manufacturing will remain dependent on foreign collaborators and deliver limited value.


India need not look far for products that can anchor its semiconductor ecosystem. It imports nearly a billion LED controller chips every year—simple, low-cost chips that can be designed domestically within months. An even larger opportunity lies in healthcare. India already has an extensive public health network of ASHA workers, Anganwadi workers, Auxiliary Nurse Midwives, Primary Health Centres, Community Health Centers, and district hospitals, yet much of it still relies on paper records. Purpose-built, low-cost smartphones with secure connectivity and a handful of essential applications could digitise frontline healthcare without the expense of feature-rich consumer devices. Designed with modular upgrades, these devices could have a longer life cycle while creating demand running into millions of units if adopted through government procurement. The same approach could extend to affordable education tablets and other products built specifically for India’s unique needs and price points.

Incentives should increasingly support integrated design, product development, and manufacturing, rather than manufacturing in isolation. If India wants to build its own mobile ecosystem, it should start by building products for itself. Therefore, a single phone should support multiple Indian languages instead of requiring different versions or separate apps. The focus should be on affordable devices with functionality tailored to Indian users.

The Indian market is price-sensitive. Yet today’s smartphones are designed to compete on features like ultra-thin designs rather than practical utility. A village health worker, for instance, does not need the slimmest phone. She needs a working device with a long battery life, locally repairable, reliable connectivity, and a few essential applications that work efficiently in the field.

India’s competitive advantage will not come from manufacturing at China’s scale or cost. It lies in building customised devices for specific users and applications. We need secure smartphones for enterprises and government departments that keep sensitive data within trusted ecosystems rather than exposing it to global platforms.

Also, it is worthwhile to observe that the rush to build massive artificial intelligence (AI) data centres may prove short-lived. As quantum computing matures, many AI workloads could be processed faster, with far lower power consumption and much smaller facilities, potentially shortening the commercial life of today’s hyperscale data centres. Like the fibre-optic boom before the dot-com crash, infrastructure alone is not enough. India should invest equally in products, applications, and technologies that can adapt to the next wave of innovation.

Technology is evolving so rapidly that today’s assumptions may not hold tomorrow. Policymakers, therefore, need to anticipate how technologies could evolve over time. That requires governments to move away from siloed decision-making and adopt a multidisciplinary approach. Institutions such as the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) bring together expertise across domains to solve complex problems. India, too, needs similar cross-sector platforms that can connect disciplines, encourage collaboration and identify synergies, rather than allowing each sector to work in isolation.

The author is Co-Founder of HCL and Chairperson of EPIC Foundation. Views expressed are personal.