At the VLSI Design Conference 2026 in Pune, industry leaders argued that India's semiconductor strategy must shift from manufacturing capacity and talent toward product ownership, domestic IP and patient capital. Speakers including Sanjay Nayak and Jaswinder Ahuja stressed building electronic products first to create demand for chips, while VLSI Society of India president Satya Gupta outlined talent programs such as a national RISC-V tape-out initiative and a revamped undergraduate VLSI curriculum.
Semicon Hunt -> pr -> VLSI Society of India
2026-06-11
At the VLSI Design Conference 2026 in Pune, Maharashtra, industry leaders argued that India's semiconductor strategy needs to move beyond manufacturing capacity and engineering talent toward product ownership, domestic intellectual property and long-term capital. Across the opening sessions, speakers converged on a common theme: India's scale as a consumer market and depth of design talent will only translate into lasting value if the country builds complete electronic products that pull chip design, packaging and manufacturing together.
Sanjay Nayak, co-founder and former CEO of Tejas Networks, said technology ownership will define economic and strategic power in the coming decades, and that India has little choice but to invest seriously in product development. Jaswinder Ahuja, former managing director of Cadence Design Systems, reinforced the point, arguing that 'designing chips and trying to sell them globally is a very different problem' and that India needs 'a strong electronic product ecosystem first' to create real demand for domestically designed chips.
Speakers repeatedly pointed to mindset and capital, rather than technical capability, as the main constraints on India's semiconductor ambitions. Nayak described a tension between short-term trading models, which require little R&D investment, and longer-term product development that policy incentives should reward. Ahuja compared chip development to a multi-year endurance effort rather than a quick win, citing the newly launched Research, Development and Innovation Fund as a potential source of the patient capital needed.
Alongside the product-led messaging, speakers pointed to early progress on the manufacturing side. Rajendra Chodankar, chairman and CEO of RRP Electronics, said the company has set up what he described as the first state-owned advanced OSAT facility in Maharashtra, already operating for legacy packaging and preparing to add advanced packaging capability. RRP and Suchi Semicon are among the first companies to establish OSAT facilities ahead of approval for a 50 percent central government subsidy under the India Semiconductor Mission.
VLSI Society of India president Satya Gupta outlined initiatives to embed product thinking earlier in the talent pipeline, including '1-TOPS', a national student program targeting a full RISC-V system-on-chip tape-out. The program drew proposals from 550 student teams across nearly 400 institutes, with 36 teams set to be selected. Gupta also announced VSIX, a one-year internship program targeting around 200 student placements, and a revised undergraduate VLSI curriculum introducing tracks in digital design, analog design, semiconductor devices and manufacturing.
The conference ran for three days and featured 23 keynote sessions, 11 technical sessions, 64 selected papers and a mix of industry forums, design contests and panels. This year's design contests, which included FPGA- and quantum-processing-unit-based projects, drew over 300 registrations, reflecting growing momentum behind India's push to move from a design-services hub toward a home for original semiconductor products.
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