The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has opened applications under the ₹1,27,500-crore second phase of the India Semiconductor Mission, which shifts emphasis towards the machines, materials, chemicals and gases that chipmaking depends on. On the same day, it cleared 12 more electronic-component projects worth ₹7,503 crore, including India’s first approvals for copper foil and battery cathode material. The figures are commitments and projections, not factories.
India’s semiconductor policy entered its second phase in practice on 6 November, when Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw launched the application portal for Semicon 2.0. Approved by the Union Cabinet in July 2026 with an outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore, Semicon 2.0 succeeds the first India Semiconductor Mission. According to the ministry’s release, applications are now open for three of its six pillars:
- Machines and materials
- Additional fabs
- Strengthening the assembly, testing, marking and packaging (ATMP/OSAT) sector
The other pillars cover chip design, research and development, and talent. The ministry says it aims to attract at least three major semiconductor-equipment makers and five suppliers of speciality chemicals and gases.
Why equipment and materials
A semiconductor fab is the visible centrepiece of any chip strategy, but it depends on a large and specialised supply chain. Wafers are processed by lithography, etching and deposition machines made by a handful of companies, mostly in the United States, the Netherlands and Japan. They also require ultra-pure chemicals and gases that are hard to produce and expensive to transport. Countries that host fabs without that supply base remain dependent on imports for every production run.
By explicitly targeting equipment makers and chemical and gas suppliers, Semicon 2.0 acknowledges that gap. Attracting those companies is, however, likely to be harder than attracting assembly plants. Equipment makers tend to locate where there is a dense cluster of fabs to serve, and India’s cluster is only beginning to form.
What the first phase delivered
The ministry’s figures for Semicon 1.0 are:
- 12 approved projects across six states, with cumulative investment of more than ₹1.64 lakh crore
- 5 in commercial production as of October 2026
- Design support: 105 startups given access to chip-design (EDA) software, 24 funded and 15 that have raised venture capital
- Training: under the Chips to Startup programme, 332 institutions given EDA tools and about 70,000 students trained
Those numbers show progress from a standing start. Most of the operating projects, however, are in assembly and packaging rather than wafer fabrication, which is the most capital-intensive and technically demanding stage.
Twelve component projects
The second announcement concerned the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS), a separate programme for the parts that go into finished electronics. The ministry approved 12 applications from 11 companies, with a combined investment of ₹7,503 crore, projected production of ₹39,045 crore and 7,127 direct jobs. The projects are in Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.
The approved products include:
- Multi-layer printed circuit boards (NeST ICELR)
- Relays and precision tooling (TDConnex, Chennai)
- Heat sinks (Modern Automotives)
- Speciality ceramics (Voltix Semicon)
- Copper foil (Indo Asia Copper)
- Anode material (TACC)
- Cathode active material (Vidyuta Materials)
- Capacitor-grade polypropylene film (Enerfolie)
- Camera rims (Surface Modification Technologies)
- Power and control systems for capital equipment (Rockwell Automation India)
- Factory automation (Wipro Pari Robotics)
The ministry highlighted that copper foil, cathode active material and speciality ceramics have been approved under the scheme for the first time. Copper foil is the current collector in lithium-ion battery anodes, and cathode active material is the single most valuable component of a battery cell. Both are dominated by Chinese suppliers. Their inclusion links the electronics programme to India’s push for battery storage and critical minerals, covered in NSH’s editions this week.
Across all rounds, ECMS now counts 118 approvals in 16 states, with projected investment of ₹77,051 crore, projected production of ₹5,73,146 crore and 81,755 direct jobs. The ministry says nearly half of the approved units are small and medium enterprises.
“No placeholders”
Vaishnaw used the launch to warn off speculative applicants. “We don’t want placeholders,” he said, according to PTI, and he told ANI there was “no place for frivolous applicants”. The remarks reflect a real risk in incentive schemes: companies may reserve subsidies with applications they never fully execute. He also said India was “very focused on making India the application capital of the world” for artificial intelligence.
Where the south stands
None of this round’s component projects is in Telangana or Andhra Pradesh. That is notable because Hyderabad hosts one of India’s largest concentrations of chip-design engineers, working for global semiconductor firms and for startups. Design, however, is only one pillar of the programme, and manufacturing incentives flow to wherever factories are built. Both states will court electronics manufacturers at their investment summits in the coming weeks: Andhra Pradesh at the CII Partnership Summit in Visakhapatnam on 12–13 November, and Telangana at its Global Summit on 7–9 December. Whether the design talent in Hyderabad can attract equipment, materials or packaging investment under Semicon 2.0 is an open question for both governments.
The caveats
- Projections, not results. The investment, production and job numbers are projections at the time of approval, not realised outcomes.
- No terms published. The fiscal-support rates, eligibility rules and application deadlines for Semicon 2.0 were not published with the portal, so NSH cannot yet assess how generous the scheme is compared with incentives in the United States, Japan or the European Union.
- No southern projects this round. None of the 12 new component approvals is in Telangana or Andhra Pradesh, despite Hyderabad’s large chip-design workforce.
