The company that controls advanced lithography has quietly opened for business in India, and its growth plan rests on one customer.
ASML executive vice-president and head of customer support Lin Kiat Yap said operations have started, beginning with 20 to 30 young engineering graduates. How fast the unit grows, he said, depends on the ambitions of India and of Tata Electronics.
Yap was speaking on the sidelines of Semicon India 2026. He framed Tata’s early steps as ecosystem seeding, and argued the country needs a second and third chipmaker before suppliers commit. Making Tata a visible success, he said, is what will draw others to look harder at India.
ASML’s chief strategic sourcing and procurement officer, Allan Wayne, put a number on the anchor project. Tata Electronics is India’s first customer running a 300mm wafer fab, at a planned 50,000 wafers a month. Scaling ASML’s presence, Wayne said, would require many more fabs on Indian soil.
The stakes are high because no leading-edge chip can be built without ASML’s tools. The Dutch supplier has been spreading staff across customer countries as governments push for domestic production, and has been adding headcount in Japan and the Netherlands in recent months.
Tata’s facility gives ASML a foothold in a market that has spent years courting equipment makers without landing a major production fab.
