Kia is considering investing about US$1.5 billion to expand its plant in Andhra Pradesh, India, while South Korean auto-parts makers have pledged follow-on investments. If approved, the project would establish an integrated vehicle manufacturing and parts-supply chain in the state.
Qualcomm has started laying off employees in India, its largest engineering base outside the US, as the chipmaker carries out a performance-focused global workforce reduction amid a fall in smartphone chip sales.
India's release of the EKA-1, Dhīr 2B, and Dhīr 5B foundation models highlights a public-backed effort to develop multilingual AI for domestic and international use. The models range from those with large-scale reasoning and coding capabilities to lightweight, offline-capable assistants, with implications for data sovereignty, public services, enterprise deployment, and access in low-connectivity environments.
Paras Semiconductors, a subsidiary of Indian defense company Paras Defence & Space Technologies, announced a strategic technology partnership with US-based BroadPak Corporation on November 6 to build advanced semiconductor packaging capabilities in India, anchored by a planned INR62 billion (US$658.77 million) OSAT facility in Madhya Pradesh.
India's push to expand semiconductor assembly and packaging capacity risks outpacing the development of its chip testing infrastructure, potentially increasing costs and prolonging reliance on overseas facilities.
India's electronics sector is drawing fresh investment in semiconductors, optical connectivity and manufacturing capacity, even as AI-driven component shortages threaten production, while consumer brands pursue expansion into new markets.
India is now an important market for Apple in two ways. It is a growth market where the company set an all-time revenue record in the September quarter, even as overall smartphone shipments fell to a decade low. It is also a production base that, according to industry estimates, assembles roughly one in four iPhones.
Corning's move to begin making optical connectivity products in Pune and add a larger adjacent plant by 2027 shows the AI-driven surge in data center fiber demand, so far strongest in the US, starting to reshape the company's manufacturing footprint in India.
Dixon Technologies is pursuing separate partnerships for servers, optical communications, and advanced semiconductor packaging as it seeks a role in AI infrastructure manufacturing, although its most ambitious silicon-photonics plans remain at the evaluation stage.
Dixon Technologies is counting on smartphone joint ventures, expanding IT hardware production, and locally made components to turn a sharp sales increase into stronger earnings, as rising memory costs inflate revenue without a corresponding rise in manufacturing volumes.
Tata Sons has put INR11 billion (US$115.71 million) into Tata Electronics through a rights issue, according to regulatory filings, adding capital to a business that has quickly become one of the largest in the Tata group.
Indian consumer electronics brand Mivi has inaugurated an INR2 billion (approx. US$21.05 million) research, development, and manufacturing facility at E-City in Tukkuguda, Hyderabad, giving the audio-focused company a monthly capacity of 500,000 earbuds and 75,000 soundbars as it pushes into smartphones.
India's semiconductor ambitions are gathering momentum as states launch new subsidies, chipmakers weigh fabs, global suppliers consider manufacturing, and engineering partnerships deepen the country's role in chip supply chains.
Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast aims to make India one of its two largest markets alongside Vietnam, Tapan Ghosh, CEO of VinFast Asia, told Nikkei Asia in an interview published on October 28. The Nasdaq-listed company expects Asia, including Vietnam, to account for 90% of its global sales by 2030.
KLA Corporation, the US maker of semiconductor inspection and metrology equipment, is evaluating a manufacturing foray in India and is considering one or two applications under the country's Semicon 2.0 incentive scheme, The Economic Times reported on October 29, citing people familiar with the developments. KLA did not respond to the newspaper's queries.
Hyderabad-based Spintronics AI Semiconductors said on October 27 that it is evaluating the feasibility of establishing a gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor fabrication facility at Vikram Udyogapuri in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, with a total proposed investment of about INR28 billion (US$294.14 million), according to ETElectronicsWorld. The company works in GaN, RF, and power semiconductor design.
