Kaynes Semicon shipped its first chip samples in just 10 months. Can the economics work?

At Semicon India 2026, Kaynes Semicon CEO Raghu Panicker recounted a moment that, in his telling, summed up how India’s manufacturing bureaucracy has changed. The company needed a Directorate General of Foreign Trade licence for materials it was importing, and the team had spent weeks exchanging emails with officials. Panicker eventually told them to stop emailing and meet the department. “Why don’t you just go to DGFT and meet and talk?” he recalled saying. The licence came through within two days of the meeting, according to Panicker.

For him, the episode captured a broader shift in India’s manufacturing bureaucracy. The old assumption, he argued, was that government approvals would take years. “The perception amongst the old-timers like us is that the government will take time,” Panicker said at a Semicon 2026 panel discussion. “That perception has to change.” Kaynes has some evidence for that argument. The company began construction at its Sanand semiconductor facility in early 2025 and shipped its first customer samples about 10 months later. When all phases are completed, the plant is designed to produce about 2.3 billion devices a year, or more than six million a day.