Why doesn't India build analog and mixed-signal ICs domestically?

India designs nearly a fifth of the world's chips. It manufactures almost none of them — and in the analog and mixed-signal category, it does not yet design world-class ones at scale either.

Analog and mixed-signal ICs are the parts of a chip that touch the physical world: precision amplifiers, data converters, power management, and the radio front-ends that carry a signal. Unlike digital logic, this work does not shrink neatly with each new manufacturing node. It rewards intuition built over decades, and that expertise is globally scarce. The world's top ten analog IC makers are six American firms, three European, and one Japanese, led by Texas Instruments — a concentration that reflects how hard the discipline is to enter.

India's position, as of 2026, is that of a capable designer without a factory. A cluster of fabless startups is doing real work. Silizium Circuits, founded in 2020, taped out an RF front-end chip supporting NaviC, GPS, and 5G bands, with a customer demanding 200,000 IPs per quarter. FermionIC Design taped out a silicon-germanium beamformer for X-band radar and satellite communications. Netrasemi raised ₹107 crore in July 2025 to complete three system-on-chip tape-outs. Maieutic Semiconductors is building an AI tool to automate analog design. On the strategic side, DRDO's SITAR and ANURAG design defence ICs, and GAETEC in Hyderabad released a GaN process design kit in December 2021 — but these serve defence and space, not commercial markets.

The gap persists because the foundations beneath the design work are incomplete. India has no high-volume indigenous fabrication for analog ICs; the country imports 90–95% of its semiconductor demand. The design talent pool is disproportionately concentrated in digital work, and most analog-heavy startups still lean on third-party IP or expatriate engineers for the precision expertise that takes decades to accumulate. Electronic design automation tools are controlled abroad, and qualified process design kits for Indian foundries remain limited. Specialty gases and high-purity inputs are imported.

What it would take is visible in the pieces already moving. Tower Semiconductor announced a joint venture with the Adani Group in September 2024 for a chip plant at Panvel, targeting 40,000–80,000 wafers a month, and the US firm Cricket Semiconductor has signalled interest in a $1 billion analog fab in Madhya Pradesh. The India Semiconductor Mission has approved 24 design projects under its Design Linked Incentive scheme. The design base exists; matching it to domestic fabrication and deep analog expertise is the climb ahead.