04 - 08 - 2026

India’s Chip Dream Must Extend Beyond the Factory Floor

India’s semiconductor ambitions will not be fulfilled by merely assembling chips or erecting billion-dollar fabrication plants.

The country’s real advantage lies in the less glamorous, but ultimately more durable, work of building a complete ecosystem—one that marries engineering talent, research, supply chains and precision manufacturing. That was the central message from Rangesh Raghavan, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director of Lam Research India, speaking at Bengaluru India Nano 2026 on Tuesday.

For more than two decades, Lam Research has quietly expanded its engineering footprint in India, contributing to semiconductor technologies deployed around the world, Raghavan said. But the next chapter, he argued, will be written not by factories alone, but by people.

“India’s semiconductor opportunity lies in building a resilient ecosystem encompassing supply chain, advanced engineering, research and a ready workforce,” he said.

The race for semiconductor leadership has become a contest of national resilience as much as industrial capacity. Countries are no longer competing merely to manufacture chips; they are seeking control over the technologies, talent and supply networks that determine who leads the digital economy.

In that contest, India’s greatest asset may not be silicon, but its engineers. Raghavan said initiatives such as Lam’s Semiverse platform are intended to widen access to semiconductor education and create a larger pool of industry-ready professionals.

Equally important, he said, is India’s opportunity to develop globally competitive capabilities across the semiconductor supply chain by combining its engineering depth with advances in precision manufacturing and innovation. As governments worldwide spend billions to secure semiconductor production, India’s challenge is becoming clearer.

Building fabrication plants is an essential beginning. Building the ecosystem that keeps them competitive is the harder task—and the one that could determine whether India’s semiconductor ambitions endure beyond the current investment cycle.