India: a long-term option

India offers Europe two things of strategic interest:

• Knowledge density. Tata, HCL, Wipro, a strong academic base in IITs, a substantial diaspora in technical roles in Europe. The talent layer is real and growing.
• Manufacturing capacity build-out. The Tata–PSMC fab in Dholera, Gujarat, plans to start with 28 nm and above from 2026–2027 with a planned capacity of 50,000 wafers per month. India has strategic motivation to build out semiconductor capacity for both economic and geopolitical reasons.

But on a 2026 timeline, India is not a substitute for Korea or Japan. Manufacturing is in an early stage; the ecosystem of materials, equipment, EDA, and packaging is not in place. Indian fabs will be operational at non-leading-edge nodes by 2027–2028, comparable to where ESMC will be in Europe.

Realistic horizon for meaningful partnership: 2028+.

What can usefully happen in 2026–2027: research and education partnerships (joint programmes between EU institutions and IITs), software and AI talent agreements, perhaps targeted procurement preferences for Indian fabs once operational. None of this substitutes for the harder partnerships in Northeast Asia, but all of it lays the foundation for a deeper second-circle partnership in the next decade.

India is the long-term option, not the medium-term solution.