ASML Doubles India Engineering Team to Support Dholera and Future Fabs

ASML Builds India Presence Ahead of Wafer Fab Wave It Expects to Serve

ASML has substantially expanded its India organisation in 2026, doubling its engineering and field service headcount in the country as the Tata Electronics Dholera fab approaches its trial production milestone and as the company positions itself for the broader wave of wafer fab investment it expects India to attract over the coming years. The expansion covers three functional areas: lithography application engineering, which supports process development and optimisation at the fab; field service engineering, which handles scanner maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting; and supply chain management for the specialised consumables including photomasks, pellicles, and calibration standards that scanners require on a continuing basis. The buildup reflects ASML's standard approach of establishing a strong in-country presence ahead of production ramp rather than relying on flying in engineers from the Netherlands for every service event.

Application Engineering and Process Support Function

ASML's application engineers work at the intersection of lithography equipment and process chemistry, helping fab engineers optimise scanner settings, select the correct photoresist and anti-reflective coating chemistry, manage overlay and critical dimension uniformity across the wafer, and diagnose yield loss attributed to lithography process variation. This function is technically demanding and requires engineers with both equipment knowledge and semiconductor process understanding, a combination that is rare and takes years of experience to develop. ASML's strategy of training and retaining application engineers in India rather than rotating them from overseas allows the company to build a local team with the kind of deep site-specific process knowledge that improves their effectiveness over time. The Dholera application engineering team will work alongside PSMC process engineers to establish the process baseline for the fab's initial product flows.

Training Centre and Long-Term Capability Building

ASML's India training centre, being established in Bengaluru, will develop a pipeline of lithography engineers through a curriculum covering scanner mechanics, optics fundamentals, process chemistry interactions, control software, and diagnostic methodologies. The training centre serves both ASML's own growing India workforce and the technicians and engineers employed by the Dholera fab, who must acquire operating and maintenance competence on ASML equipment as part of the facility's operational ramp. ASML has run similar training programmes at its facilities in the Netherlands and through partnerships with technical universities in Taiwan and South Korea, and the India training centre extends this capability development model to a market where lithography expertise is currently minimal but will be in high demand within two to three years as the Dholera fab and any subsequent Indian fab investments reach operational status.

Future Fab Pipeline and ASML's India Revenue Outlook

ASML's investment in India goes beyond servicing the Dholera fab, which on its own would not justify the scale of organisational build-up the company is executing. The company's management has indicated that it expects India to attract additional wafer fab investments beyond Dholera over the second half of this decade, driven by the combination of government incentives, a growing domestic chip demand base, and the strategic interest of global electronics companies in geographic diversification of their semiconductor supply chains. Each additional fab in India would represent significant ASML equipment revenue and create ongoing demand for field service and application support. Establishing a strong and capable India team now, before competition for lithography engineering talent in the country becomes intense, is ASML's approach to being ready for that growth opportunity.