NITI Aayog released a ten-year semiconductor roadmap on Thursday setting a $120–150 billion domestic value chain target by 2035, with government subsidy covering 33% of the build-out cost. The plan addresses a projected $240 billion annual import bill if India maintains current chip dependency, positioning the roadmap as fiscal defense rather than industrial aspiration. The report names fabrication capacity, packaging infrastructure, and design talent as the three pillars requiring coordinated public-private investment through the next decade.

India currently imports over 85% of its semiconductor needs, concentrated in consumer electronics, automotive control units, and telecommunications infrastructure. The roadmap calls for domestic fabrication plants capable of producing sub-28 nanometer chips by 2030, with packaging and assembly facilities scaling to 50% self-sufficiency by 2032. NITI Aayog estimates the government commitment at $40–50 billion over the period, with the balance funded through joint ventures with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Samsung, and unnamed Japanese fabrication partners. The report does not specify how subsidy allocation will be sequenced, though it notes front-loaded capital deployment in fabrication infrastructure through 2028.

The $240 billion import figure assumes continuation of current electronics manufacturing growth without domestic chip production. India's electronics production grew 18% annually from 2020 through 2024, driven by smartphone assembly, electric vehicle adoption, and data center expansion. Without local chip supply, import dependency compounds as downstream manufacturing scales. The roadmap frames semiconductor self-sufficiency as a prerequisite for maintaining electronics export competitiveness, particularly in markets where supply chain sovereignty increasingly drives procurement decisions. India's current chip design workforce numbers approximately 20,000 engineers; the plan targets 120,000 by 2032.

Allocators tracking India exposure should watch three near-term signals. First, fabrication partnership announcements expected in Q2 and Q3 2025, likely naming Taiwanese or South Korean anchor partners and specific Indian states offering land and power subsidies. Second, rare-earth mineral supply agreements, as semiconductor-grade materials remain a chokepoint India has not yet addressed in public documents. Third, the sequencing of subsidy disbursements, which will clarify whether the government prioritizes upstream fabrication or downstream assembly in the first tranche. The roadmap's 33% subsidy rate sits between China's 40–50% historical semiconductor support and the United States' 25% under the CHIPS Act, suggesting India benchmarked competitive subsidy floors rather than technological milestones.

The report follows India's $10 billion semiconductor incentive program launched in 2021, which attracted four fabrication proposals but has yet to produce operational capacity. NITI Aayog's updated roadmap does not reconcile the prior program's stalled progress, though timing suggests the new plan incorporates lessons from partnership negotiations that faltered on power infrastructure and skilled labor availability. The first fabrication plant under the 2021 program, a Foxconn-Vedanta joint venture in Gujarat, was shelved in 2023 after technology transfer terms with European partners collapsed. The 2035 target assumes those partnership structures are now resolved, though the roadmap provides no detail on revised terms.

Government subsidy at 33% of build-out cost implies private capital must supply $80–100 billion over ten years, or roughly $8–10 billion annually. That figure exceeds India's current foreign direct investment in electronics manufacturing by a factor of three, requiring either a step-change in capital commitment or a longer timeline than the roadmap suggests. Allocators pricing India semiconductor exposure should assume slippage in the 2030 fabrication milestone and focus instead on packaging and assembly capacity, where capital requirements are lower and India's existing electronics manufacturing ecosystem provides adjacent infrastructure. The $240 billion import bill is the number that matters; the roadmap is the government's acknowledgment that the bill is already being written.