Authentic, Indigenous India Semiconductor Manufacturing Rise: CDIL, INFAB, AGNIT, and Monk9

At the recently concluded IESA Vision Summit 2026, I met many global and Indian companies. The event’s major sponsors included leading global semiconductor equipment companies and Indian companies that largely depend on them for market and business growth. Authentic Indian semiconductor companies and their supporters were not highly visible. Although AGNIT Semiconductor had a stall, its presence was limited, as the company did not participate in keynotes, panels, or other interactive sessions.

While Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) remains the government-owned oldest low-volume chip fab, companies such as CDIL have been serving the global and domestic discrete semiconductor market since the 1970s. In the last 2–3 years, I have come across Monk9, INFAB, and AGNIT, three semiconductor fabs that now stand on the threshold of transitioning to volume production.

INFAB is headed by Muthuraman Swaminathan. Although it is currently a low-volume fab, it possesses basic state-of-the-art facilities and world-class expertise in MEMS technology, with the potential to scale its low-volume MEMS production into high-volume manufacturing. INFAB Semiconductor specializes in the design, development, and manufacturing of advanced sensors, actuators, and microfluidic devices based on MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology. INFAB aims to develop MEMS devices w...