Why Bengaluru could emerge as a major semiconductor hub
Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Zetwerk, and C-DAC either announce new facilities or expand existing ones as the city cements its global lead in chip designing
In a major leap towards emerging as the semiconductor capital of India, Bengaluru on February 7 saw as many as four bodies, including noted manufacturers and government research organisations in the field, making announcements to set up or expand existing facilities in the city and its outskirts.
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They included two US companies, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments (TI), besides the country’s own Zetwerk Electronics and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which operates under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Bengaluru's semiconductor feats
- Qualcomm, the world's largest mobile processor company, has an edge with its cutting-edge '2 nanometer' (50 billion transistors are packed into a chip of the width of a hair) chips. This chip, which can enhance the performance of smartphones and electronic devices by miles, has been designed at the Qualcomm India Design Centre in Bengaluru. The chip will revolutionise artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and 6G technologies in the coming days. The best chip designs that will be installed in mobile phones globally will come out of Bengaluru now.
- While chip design is a challenging task, validation is a crucial step before fabrication to ensure that it works as expected. India's largest 'Pre-Silicon Chip Validation Facility' has also been launched at C-DAC in Bengaluru’s Byappanahalli. Till now, small Indian startups and chip designers have had to rely on foreign labs to test the designs of their chips. Now, with a facility in Bengaluru, both time and money will be saved.
- Zetwerk, a unicorn company in global manufacturing services, has also launched its new manufacturing unit at the Hi-Tech Defence and Aerospace Park in Devanahalli in north Bengaluru. Here, cutting-edge components and electronic equipment required for the defence, aerospace and electronics sectors will be manufactured and brought out. Electronic chip-based equipment required by the defence sector will be supplied from here.
- Texas Instruments, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious semiconductor companies, has opened its new research and development (R&D) centre in Electronics City, Bengaluru. TI was one of the first multinational tech companies to set foot in Bengaluru in 1985. Today, even after four decades, it is increasing its investment in Bengaluru. This centre will research analog chips and embedded processors. Chips for electric vehicles and Internet of Things devices will be developed here.
Besides, semiconductor company Graphcore, backed by British-based SoftBank, also chose Bengaluru to open its first office in India recently, and seeks to establish an artificial intelligence engineering campus in the city.
Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Monday (February 9) launched a two-nanometre semiconductor chip at Qualcomm’s facility in Bengaluru and expressed satisfaction, saying the next level of achievement will originate from India.
Karnataka's IT talent pool
Given that Karnataka's capital is a major information technology (IT) hub offering a ready pool of talent and the technology sector gets a wide patronage from the government, it has found itself at an advantage to also grow into a major centre in the semiconductor sector, particularly in silicon chipset design.
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For industry experts, Bengaluru’s quest to become a hardware capital, besides its established reputation as the software capital, is not new. Yatheendranath TJ, chief executive officer of the city-based DhiiHii Labs Private Limited, said the recent development seemed to be a new one; the process has been underway for some years now, thanks to its rich talent pool.
“The reason why Bengaluru's tech sector is growing so rapidly is because of the talented engineers available here. The presence of 12 research centres affiliated to DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) is a testament to this. Whether it is software or hardware, there is no match for the engineers working in Bengaluru,” he told The Federal.
Also stressing on Karnataka’s strong foundation in engineering education, he added, “Karnataka was once a state with the highest number of engineering colleges. Thus, a lot of emerging talent emerged there. They are capable of meeting global demands. Their proficiency in English and adaptability inspired companies from other countries to set up companies in Bengaluru.”
Yatheendranath also said the city’s climate and ecosystem are conducive to entrepreneurship, and it has enabled Bengaluru to grow in both the software and hardware sectors.
Growing startups
“Also, the number of startups has naturally grown due to the growth of testing and R&D centres,” he said.
It may be mentioned here that Karnataka has taken a big leap forward in terms of startups, both nationally and globally, in recent times. In 2025, it finished second only to Maharashtra with more than 21,000 startups on its soil. In the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2025 by the US-based Startup Genome, Bengaluru-Karnataka went up by seven places to rank 14th, finishing ahead of centres such as Seattle and Chicago.
'Bengaluru leads in chip designing'
Sudhir Shankar, head of Mysuru cluster of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), which seeks to transform Karnataka’s digital landscape, told this website that Bengaluru is No.1 in the world when it comes to chip designing without any potential competitor. The KDEM official said that while China and South Korea lead in terms of chip production, it is Bengaluru that plays a leading role in the design part.
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According to him, too, the process started quite early. “While chip designing has seen a boost in Bengaluru in recent times, innovations in the field started here long ago with companies being set up,” he said. Shankar echoed Yatheendranath, saying the availability of skilled engineers in the IT capital has facilitated the process. Hailing Karnataka’s engineering education, he said colleges in the state have consistently prepared engineers for high-skilled jobs, winning the companies’ trust.
“There are more than 400 silicon chip-manufacturing companies along Bengaluru’s Outer Ring Road. Moreover, in recent times, under the Beyond Bengaluru initiative under the KDEM, some companies have also been set up in places such as Mysore and Hubballi,” he said, indicating the state’s move to decentralise the sector.
Speaking on chip manufacturing, the KDEM official said it is a very delicate job.
“The process involves converting sand into silicon. However, the final chip is 99.999 percent pure silicon. They are shaped into eight-micrometre pipes and converted into 10-nanometre sheets. They have to be designed in the desired way by performing a photo-optical chemical process. This process is the most complex, and Bengaluru companies and engineers do this process efficiently. That is why Bengaluru has grown into a design centre,” he told The Federal.
'Successive state govts have focused on sector'
Shankar also said that successive governments of Karnataka, ranging from the chief minister to the IT-BT ministers, have ensured that the state’s potential in chip technology did not go unattended, and that is another reason why Bengaluru is reaping the benefits today.
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While it has already bought a worldwide reputation for its software exploits, the latest developments around chip designing, testing, and manufacturing mean Bengaluru is now all prepared to wrest the ‘hardware capital’ tag as well.
Global giants such as Intel, Nvidia, AMD and Samsung are already designing cutting-edge chips in Bengaluru, and the ingenuity of Bengaluru engineers is evident in the complex chips used in ultra-modern devices -- from smartphones to supercomputers.
Before a designed chip goes to market, it has to undergo rigorous testing, and Bengaluru is also making a mark in this. Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) units for chips, which are significant for backend work in semiconductor manufacturing, are springing up in the city and its surrounding areas, with Foxconn being a good example.
(The article was first published in The Federal Karnataka)
