ASML begins India operations as Tata’s Dholera fab takes shape
The Dutch lithography major has started hiring in India — 20–30 engineers to begin with — with Tata Electronics’ 300 mm Dholera fab as its first customer here and the pace of expansion tied to how fast that project scales.
Sep 21, 20263 min read
Photo: APAC News Network
ASML — the Dutch firm whose lithography machines print the circuit patterns onto silicon wafers, and without which no advanced chip gets made — has started operations in India. The company will begin with a team of 20–30 engineering graduates, and has said openly that how quickly that number grows depends on Tata Electronics' semiconductor fab at Dholera.
Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of SEMICON India 2026, ASML Executive Vice President and Head of Customer Support Lin Kiat Yap said the India operation is already running, and deliberately small to start with.
"Right now," Yap said, when asked when ASML would begin operations. "We are probably going to start off with 20-30 people. We will see how fast it scales. It really depends on the ambitions of India, and it really depends on the ambitions of Tata."
Dholera is ASML's first Indian customer
ASML Chief Strategic Sourcing and Procurement Officer Allan Wayne confirmed that Tata Electronics is the company's first customer in India with a 300 mm semiconductor fabrication plant — the Dholera fab, planned for a capacity of 50,000 wafers a month and scheduled to begin operations in 2028.
For the equipment maker, one fab is a beginning rather than a market. "If we're going to be scaling this up, we need to be able to build many fabs here," Wayne said, pointing to government policy and India's engineering talent as the factors that make that plausible.
He put a number on what the country's own targets imply: "As you go on into 2032, India's projection and India's ambition are to have between 15 per cent and 25 per cent of the wafer fab of India's local semiconductor demand. That means you're going to have several fabs by 2032."
Why the first fab matters more than its own output
Both executives returned to the same point — that Dholera's value to the wider ecosystem is as proof that the thing can be done here at all.
"I think it's good that Tata is taking the very first steps in seeding the ecosystem. I think it's also very important to continue to grow the ecosystem, to bring in a second player, to bring in a third player," Yap said. "We want to make Tata successful because I think when people see Tata being a success, I think people will start to spend a little bit more time, be a little bit more focused in India and see the potential opportunities."
That makes execution the variable to watch. "I think it's important that this first 300-mm fab in Tata is able to test and qualify, have excellent quality and yield and hit on schedule so that there are no delays," Wayne said.
The policy backdrop
The central government has announced the Semicon 2.0 scheme, with incentives of roughly ₹1.27 lakh crore aimed at building out the semiconductor ecosystem. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said investment proposals worth around USD 12 billion are likely under it.
For Dholera, the significance is straightforward: a global equipment supplier is now staffing up in India on the strength of a fab being built here, and has said in public that its growth curve follows that project's. The supply chain, support engineers and second-order services that a working fab pulls in are the part that settles around the site itself.
