For decades, the world's appetite for semiconductor chips had quietly been fed by a handful of East Asian countries — Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China. Three-quarters of global chip manufacturing capacity sat in that one region. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, demand for electronics exploded, factory lines in East Asia buckled, and the fragility of that concentration became impossible to ignore. Car plants shut down for lack of chips. Phones were delayed. Governments scrambled.

For Ashok Mehta, founder of Suchi Industries — one of India's largest embroidery manufacturers — it was an opening.

"At the time of almost COVID, when the whole world was stuck from chip shortage, I thought: why not enter this industry?" Mehta told Fortune India. He started researching. He reached out to contacts in Malaysia. He hired. He built. And then, four years later, he had a working chip packaging plant in Surat — operational before a single rupee of government subsidy had arrived.

On May 5, 2026, the Union Cabinet formally approved Suchi Semicon's facility under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), with a sanctioned investment of ₹868 crore and an approved annual capacity of over 1,033 million chips. For a company that began by threading needles, it is now threading wafers.

"Sky is the limit," Mehta said. "My dream is always big. In my 40 years of business journey, I never missed my flight."

From textiles to transistors

Suchi Industries, established in 2004, grew over two decades into one of the country's biggest embroidery businesses. Mehta's textile export background had given him something unusual: a working relationship with buyers and suppliers across Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, and the US. When the chip shortage hit, he used that network differently.

"Due to my textile export background, I had connections with the whole world. Malaysia is the hub for semiconductor packaging. I had very good connections there. So we started an office in Malaysia, hired very, very experienced people, kept a backend office there for two years, planned everything — and then set up the unit in Surat," Mehta said.

Every senior member of Suchi Semicon's technical team has between 25 and 35 years of experience in semiconductor packaging. Local engineers from IIT Bombay and SVNIT Surat were hired a year in advance and trained internally by these veterans. On retaining them, Mehta's approach is deliberate. "I give ESOPs to almost everyone. The culture of my factory is very different from big industries. I treat all my staff as family members. Even if someone offers them 10, 20, or 25% more, they will not move from here," he said.

Building before the approval

What distinguishes Suchi Semicon from nearly every other player in India's semiconductor story is the sequence: it built first, and sought approval later.

"Other players started after getting approval. We started our journey three years back. This is the biggest advantage for our company," Mehta said.

The pilot line in Surat was already running when the Cabinet gave its nod on May 5. The company has shipped pilot chips to a US-based consumer electronics client, and the product has passed qualification. "Our product is 100% qualified. There is no issue, because I have an expert team — they have been doing this for 30 to 35 years," Mehta said.

The facility handles wafer sizes from 4 to 12 inches and offers services including wafer back-grinding, dicing, packaging, laser marking, and final testing. Focus areas include SOIC chips for consumer electronics and QFN and power semiconductor packages for automotive applications. Mehta was clear about what comes next. "From next week, we will start the big investments."

The three-year target: nearly 3 million packaged chips per day, a workforce scaling from the current 80 to 1,000, and a customer base spanning at least 10 global names.

The ROHM commitment

Japan's ROHM Semiconductor is Suchi Semicon's anchor customer and strategic partner, supporting product development, equipment selection, and raw material procurement — at the preferential pricing ROHM negotiates globally for its own factories in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. "At the same price, I am getting raw materials from Japan," Mehta said.

But the relationship comes with a clear, self-imposed boundary. Mehta will not take orders from ROHM's direct competitors in the power device space.

"Once I commit with ROHM, I will not go to another customer who is their competitor. I protect ROHM because they protects me. The relation is just like a husband and wife," he said. "Don't go for small profit and go here and there. I am a commitment person."

ROHM has nearly 25,000 employees and a global presence. Its plan is to use Suchi's Surat plant to supply 'Make in India' chips domestically and globally. For Mehta, the math is obvious. "This plant is very small for them. Why would I lose this customer and go to their competitor?"

Two years to profitability

On the question of when Suchi Semicon turns profitable, Mehta draws on a simple historical argument. Without government support, he says, no semiconductor company in any country survived its early years — not in Malaysia, not in Thailand, not anywhere. The incentive schemes happened first, then those industries became self-sustaining.

"Within two or three years, we will also be 100% self-sufficient. There is no issue," he told Fortune India.

That window — from the commencement of full commercial operations post-approval — would place Suchi's profitability milestone around 2027-28. The company is targeting ₹200 crore in revenue in its first year of full operations, with the longer arc projecting over $100 million across the first three years.

On raw materials, the picture is frank. For automotive-grade chips, all sourcing is from Japan — partly through ROHM's own supply chain. For consumer electronics chips, sourcing is split between China and Taiwan. Locally sourced inputs today: zero. "We are trying to develop that in India — me, Tata, and everyone. But we are waiting for the quality. Once we get it, we will use it. I don't want to take any risk with my qualifications," Mehta said.

India's semiconductor race

Suchi is not alone in Gujarat — or in India. The state has become the country's most active semiconductor geography, drawing investments that dwarf Suchi's in scale and global backing.

Micron Technology has invested $2.75 billion to set up an ATMP facility in Sanand — one of the largest single semiconductor investments in India's history. It is a captive unit, packaging only Micron's own chips, and does not compete in the open market the way Suchi does.

Kaynes Semicon, a subsidiary of listed manufacturer Kaynes Technology, inaugurated its ₹3,300-crore OSAT facility in Sanand in March 2026, focused on Intelligent Power Modules for EVs and industrial applications. "We currently have a pipeline of 22 customers, with six signed off, utilising 30–35% of our production capacity," Kaynes Semicon CEO Raghu Panicker told Fortune India in an earlier interview. "This year, we are targeting $50–60 million overall," he added.

CG Power — in a joint venture with Japan's Renesas and Thailand's Stars Microelectronics — is building a large OSAT in Sanand worth approximately ₹7,500 crore with a planned capacity of over 15 million units. Outside Gujarat, Tata Electronics is building the country's largest OSAT in Assam at ₹27,120 crore, targeting 48 million units. With 12 projects now approved under the India Semiconductor Mission and cumulative investments touching ₹1.64 lakh crore, India's chip packaging ecosystem is moving at a pace few predicted five years ago.

Mehta is unfazed. "There is no issue about competition — we have enough orders in our pocket," he said.

India first, global next

On where Suchi positions itself, Mehta is unambiguous. Despite its global customer list spanning Japan, the US, Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, the primary target market is domestic.

"India is currently importing semiconductor chips worth almost $20 billion. Our main focus is India. That is why the government is supporting us — because of Atmanirbhar Bharat," Mehta said.

For the next phase, Suchi is watching ISM 2.0 closely. "Now we are in legacy packages — the basic packages. For ISM 2, our next target is advanced packaging," he said. The company has also launched a sister entity — Suchi Logic — for in-house chip design, and has tied up with IITs, NITs, GTU, and Gujarat colleges to build a long-term talent pipeline.

The challenge ahead

India's OSAT ambitions are real, but so are the obstacles. China's pricing in packaging is brutally competitive. Southeast Asia has customer relationships built over decades. India currently imports 100% of its semiconductor raw materials. Supply chain localisation will take years.

Mehta knows all this. But he has heard the scepticism before.

"A lot of people were laughing at me when I planned for semiconductor chips. Today they believe — oh, this man can do it. Our whole team proved it: textile guys can do technology business also."

For Ashok Mehta, Suchi Semicon is not trying to out-scale Micron or out-engineer Tata. It is trying to prove that an Indian industrial family — with the right conviction, the right partners, and a team built ground-up — can build something the country never had: a homegrown chip packaging company that ships to the world.

The pilot line is running. The orders are in. The cabinet has given its nod.