Tata’s Assam Chip Plant Begins Pilot Production as Dholera Fab Remains Under Construction

Tata Electronics’ semiconductor assembly and testing plant at Jagiroad in Assam’s Morigaon district has entered pilot production, marking the first operational step in the company’s two-site chip manufacturing plan, which also includes the semiconductor fab under construction at Dholera in Gujarat. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma confirmed on October 3 that the plant’s first cleanroom is functional and that pilot runs have started. Commercial production is expected to begin around December 2026 or January 2027.

The Jagiroad unit, built at an investment of about Rs 27,000 crore, is an Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility, also described as an Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) unit. It does not fabricate chips from raw silicon. Instead, it receives processed wafers that already carry circuit patterns, cuts them into individual chips, and then packages and tests them before they are supplied for use in electronic products. The facility is spread over 592 acres on the former site of the Nagaon Paper Mill and has a planned peak capacity of 48 million chips per day.

The Assam plant is designed to work as the back-end partner to Tata Electronics’ front-end fabrication project in the Dholera Special Investment Region. Tata Electronics is investing around Rs 91,000 crore in the Dholera fab in partnership with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC). Under this arrangement, Dholera will fabricate chips on silicon wafers, while Jagiroad will handle assembly, packaging and testing.

The Dholera fab, however, is still under construction and has not yet produced any wafers. As a result, the wafers being used during Jagiroad’s pilot phase are coming from external fabrication plants, mostly global suppliers. The Assam facility is also not tied only to Dholera’s future output. It has been designed to serve several domestic and international customers, with wafers either provided by those customers or sourced by Tata Electronics from global foundries.

Customer programmes linked to Jagiroad include Qualcomm automotive modules and certain Nexperia discrete products, with wafers or dies drawn from those companies’ existing supply chains. The plant is expected to use packaging technologies such as flip chip, wire bond and Integrated System in Package (ISIP). Its output is aimed at sectors including automobiles, electric vehicles, telecommunications, consumer electronics, mobile devices, computing and artificial intelligence. Tata Electronics has partnered with equipment and material suppliers from Europe, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, including ASMPT, Besi, Fujifilm and Nexperia.

Construction of a second cleanroom is in progress. Assam Chief Secretary Ravi Kota had earlier stated that trial runs were operating at roughly one-fourth of planned capacity. Chief Minister Sarma has said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to inaugurate the facility in December or January, though an official date has not been announced.

The project was approved under the India Semiconductor Mission in February 2024. The Centre and the Assam government have together sanctioned Rs 14,044 crore in incentives, with Rs 10,255 crore coming from the Centre and Rs 3,789 crore from the state. The state government is also implementing a 12.5 MLD water supply scheme drawing from the Kapili River, of which 11 MLD is allocated to the plant, along with dedicated power connectivity. A women’s hostel is being built for the workforce.

The facility is projected to create more than 27,000 direct and indirect jobs, including around 15,000 direct positions. These remain projections, as recruitment and training are still under way. Around 20 to 25 women from Assam, trained at other Tata Electronics units, have joined the plant so far, while nearly 500 more are undergoing training. Officials have indicated that stabilising operations and building a local supplier base could take one to two years after commercial production begins.

For Dholera, the Jagiroad milestone shows the back-end part of Tata’s semiconductor plan moving ahead of the front-end fab. Once the Dholera fab starts wafer production, the two sites are intended to operate as a linked domestic chain covering both fabrication and packaging. The latest reports do not specify when Dholera’s first wafer output is expected, and progress at the Gujarat site will be key to how closely the two facilities function together in the coming years.