“A historic day for Rajasthan as it enters the semiconductor industry — a strategically critical industry from a geopolitical perspective.” — Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, 15 May 2026
On 15 May 2026, India inaugurated its first SME-led semiconductor chip manufacturing facility at Bhiwadi, Rajasthan — marking the state’s entry into the globally strategic semiconductor industry. The facility, established by Sahasra Semiconductors Pvt. Ltd., is an ATMP/OSAT (Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging / Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) plant located within the Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) developed by ELCINA at Salarpur, Khushkhera, Alwar district, near Delhi-NCR.
The virtual inauguration was conducted by Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in the presence of Rajasthan CM Bhajan Lal Sharma and Union Minister Bhupender Yadav. This facility is India’s 13th semiconductor node overall, developed under the SPECS scheme — outside the main India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) approved project list. More than 60% of current production is already being exported to the USA, Germany, France, and other markets, validating international quality from day one.
✨ What Is an ATMP/OSAT Facility?
Semiconductor manufacturing broadly involves three stages:
- Chip Design: Fabless companies (e.g., Qualcomm, Apple) create circuit blueprints — no manufacturing involved.
- Wafer Fabrication (Fab): Etching billions of transistors onto silicon wafers inside ultra-clean facilities. The domain of TSMC, Samsung, and Intel — requiring $10–20 billion investments and cutting-edge lithography machines.
- ATMP/OSAT: After wafers are sliced into individual chips (dies), they are assembled into protective packages, electrically tested, marked with identification codes, and packaged for delivery into finished products.
ATMP (Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging) describes the manufacturing process; OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) describes the business model — where chip designers outsource this final stage to specialists. The global OSAT industry is dominated by Taiwan’s ASE Group, the USA’s Amkor Technology, and China’s JCET.
India had virtually no domestic OSAT capacity before these recent facilities — leaving electronics manufacturers entirely dependent on foreign packaging services for chips used in phones, cars, defence, and medical devices.
Think of ATMP like the packaging line at a biscuit factory. The biscuit itself (the chip die) is made elsewhere — but before it reaches the consumer, it must be arranged, tested for quality, labelled, and sealed into a box. Without a packaging line, you can’t sell the biscuit — even if you’ve bought the raw biscuits from abroad. India had no packaging line for chips. Bhiwadi’s Sahasra facility is, for semiconductors, that packaging line.
| Stage | Activity | Global Leaders | India’s Status (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chip Design | Circuit blueprints; IP creation | Qualcomm, Apple, ARM | Growing — DLI scheme; 24 projects |
| Wafer Fabrication | Etching transistors on silicon wafers | TSMC, Samsung, Intel | Tata fab (Dholera) — under construction |
| ATMP / OSAT | Assembly, testing, packaging of dies | ASE Group, Amkor, JCET | Operational — Sahasra (Bhiwadi), Micron (Gujarat) |
ATMP ≠ Chip Fabrication. The Bhiwadi facility packages chips — it does not manufacture the silicon die. India currently has no operational commercial silicon fab. The Tata Electronics fab in Dholera, Gujarat ($10 billion, the flagship ISM project) is under construction and expected around 2026–27 at mature nodes. Also: the Sahasra plant was built under the SPECS scheme, not the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) — though it counts as India’s 13th semiconductor node overall.
📌 Key Features of the Sahasra Semiconductors Facility
Products Manufactured: The Bhiwadi plant packages a range of strategic electronic components —
- Micro SD cards and flash storage devices
- LED driver ICs (integrated circuits for LED lighting control)
- eSIMs (embedded SIMs for mobile phones and IoT devices)
- RFID products (used in logistics, supply chain, and security applications)
Infrastructure: The facility spans approximately 57,000 sq ft and includes Class 10K and Class 100K cleanrooms — controlled environments with strict particulate limits to prevent contamination during assembly. (Class 10K = no more than 10,000 particles of 0.5 microns or larger per cubic foot of air.)
Investment: Over ₹150 crore under the SPECS scheme.
Current Capacity: 60 million semiconductor units annually, immediately operational at commercial scale.
Scale-Up Plan: Expanding to 400–600 million units/year within 2–3 years.
Exports: More than 60% of current production already exported — buyers in the USA, Germany, France, Eastern Europe, China, and Nepal.
🌍 The ELCINA Electronics Manufacturing Cluster at Bhiwadi
The Sahasra facility sits within a broader ecosystem. The Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) at Salarpur, Khushkhera, Bhiwadi — developed by ELCINA (Electronics Industries Association of India) — spans 50.3 acres and was built at a total project cost of ₹46.09 crore, of which government support under the EMC scheme was ₹20.24 crore.
The EMC has attracted planned investments of over ₹1,200 crore from 20 companies across semiconductor packaging, EV parts, RFID technologies, and industrial electronics. Of these, 11 companies are already operational with investments exceeding ₹900 crore, generating employment for more than 2,700 people.
Bhiwadi sits in Alwar district, adjacent to Delhi-NCR, and has historically been a major automobile manufacturing hub. The semiconductor cluster is transforming this belt from automotive manufacturing to high-tech electronics — a shift explicitly endorsed by both the central and state governments through the Rajasthan Semiconductor Policy 2026.
⚖️ Policy Architecture: ISM, SPECS, DLI and Rajasthan’s Push
India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 1.0 — Launched December 2021: Outlay of ₹76,000 crore under MeitY; fiscal support of up to 50% of capital expenditure for silicon fabs, compound semiconductor fabs, ATMP/OSAT units, and chip design projects. As of May 2026, 12 projects approved across 6 states — Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Punjab, and Andhra Pradesh — with cumulative investments of approximately ₹1.64 lakh crore. Flagship projects: Tata Electronics’ $10 billion silicon fab and Micron Technology’s $2.75 billion ATMP plant, both in Gujarat.
ISM 2.0 — Announced Union Budget 2026–27: Outlay of ₹40,000 crore, focusing on semiconductor equipment manufacturing, materials, full-stack Indian IP development, and supply chain resilience. Initial allocation: ₹1,000 crore for FY 2026–27. By 2029, India is projected to design and manufacture chips for 70–75% of domestic applications.
SPECS Scheme: The Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors provides financial incentives covering capital expenditure on plant, machinery, and R&D — focused on SME and domestic players. The Sahasra facility was built under SPECS, making it distinct from ISM-approved projects.
Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme: Supports fabless semiconductor design startups and MSMEs. As of January 2026, 24 chip design projects have been supported, covering microprocessors, satellite communication, energy metering, IoT, and surveillance systems.
Rajasthan Semiconductor Policy 2026 (March 2026): Covers semiconductor research, design, manufacturing, testing, and packaging. Proposes dedicated semiconductor corridors in the Jodhpur–Pali–Marwar region and aims to develop the Bhiwadi–Khushkhera belt into a major electronics and semiconductor hub.
📖 India’s Semiconductor Stakes: Import Dependence and the Road Ahead
India’s semiconductor import bill represents one of its most persistent strategic vulnerabilities. India currently imports the vast majority of its semiconductor requirements — from mobile phones and automobiles to defence electronics and medical devices — primarily from Taiwan (60%+ of world output), South Korea, China, and the USA.
India’s semiconductor market is projected to reach $100–110 billion by 2030, yet domestic production remains a tiny fraction. The COVID-19 chip shortage (2020–21), which halted automobile production lines worldwide, exposed the fragility of zero domestic capacity. Simultaneously, US-China technology tensions have made Taiwan-centric supply chains geopolitically precarious.
India’s electronics manufacturing output has grown six-fold in 12 years to approximately ₹13 lakh crore, with mobile phones emerging as India’s top export commodity and total electronics exports reaching around ₹4.24 lakh crore. Yet this growth is built almost entirely on importing chips and assembling them. Moving upstream into packaging, and eventually fabrication, is the logical next step.
The strategic case for ATMP-first is strong: ATMP requires far less capital than a fab, creates an indigenous packaging supply chain that global chip designers can use, attracts associated chemical and materials businesses, and enables truly “Made in India” chips — designed, tested, and packaged domestically — even while wafers continue to be fabricated abroad in the near term.
India’s semiconductor strategy raises a classic make-or-buy dilemma at national scale. ATMP facilities like Bhiwadi are commercially viable today — but they don’t reduce India’s dependence on foreign wafer fabs. Tata’s Dholera fab addresses that, but won’t be operational until 2027+. In the meantime, if geopolitical conflict disrupts Taiwan’s supply, India’s domestic ATMP capacity becomes useless without silicon wafers. Is an ATMP-first strategy genuinely strategic — or just the easiest win in a much harder race?
Click to flip • Master key facts
The Sahasra Semiconductors facility at Bhiwadi was inaugurated on 15 May 2026 — India’s first SME-led ATMP/OSAT semiconductor facility and the country’s 13th semiconductor node overall.
The Sahasra Semiconductors facility was developed under the SPECS scheme — not the ISM. SPECS is specifically designed for SME and domestic players; ISM covers the flagship large projects like Tata fab and Micron.
ISM 1.0 was launched in December 2021 with an outlay of ₹76,000 crore, providing fiscal support of up to 50% of capital expenditure for silicon fabs, compound semiconductor fabs, ATMP units, and chip design projects.
ATMP stands for Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging — the final stage of semiconductor production after wafer fabrication. OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) describes the business model for this stage.
The Rajasthan Semiconductor Policy 2026 (introduced March 2026) proposes a dedicated semiconductor corridor in the Jodhpur-Pali-Marwar region, along with developing the Bhiwadi-Khushkhera belt as a semiconductor hub.
