Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the CG Semi Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility in Sanand, Gujarat, on Sunday, 5 July 2026, marking a significant milestone in India's push toward domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The Prime Minister highlighted his interaction with the facility's young workforce, noting that a large number of employees are women drawn from remote regions.

Context

Posting on X, PM Modi described the moment as 'one of the most special' during the inauguration, emphasising his engagement with the youth working at the plant. The post noted that the workforce includes a significant proportion of women who 'hail from remote' areas — a detail that underscores the facility's role in creating employment beyond urban centres.

Sanand has steadily grown into one of India's premier electronics and automotive manufacturing corridors, with the state government actively courting high-technology investments to anchor the region's industrial identity.

Policy Backdrop

The CG Semi OSAT unit is part of India's broader semiconductor self-reliance drive anchored by the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2021 with an outlay of Rs 76,000 crore. The mission targets the full spectrum of chip manufacturing, from fabrication to backend assembly, testing, and packaging — the segment that OSAT facilities specialise in.

The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for electronics was subsequently expanded in 2022 to explicitly cover semiconductor assembly, testing, and packaging, making projects like the Sanand plant eligible for central incentives. Gujarat has emerged alongside Assam as a key destination for these backend semiconductor investments under the mission.

Stakeholders and Impact

The facility's workforce composition is among its most politically and socially significant aspects. The employment of women from remote areas in a high-technology manufacturing environment aligns with the government's stated goals of skilling rural youth and expanding female labour-force participation in the formal economy.

Semiconductor MSMEs, component suppliers, and logistics firms in Gujarat's industrial belt stand to benefit from the downstream activity generated by an operational OSAT unit. India's integration into global chip supply chains — currently dominated by facilities in Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia — depends on demonstrating reliable, scalable backend capacity of precisely this kind.

What's Next

Attention will now turn to the commissioning timelines and capacity utilisation of the Sanand facility, as well as further project approvals under the India Semiconductor Mission expected through 2026–27. The government is widely anticipated to greenlight additional OSAT and chip-design investments as it seeks to position India as a credible node in the global semiconductor supply chain.

The inauguration of the CG Semi plant signals that India's semiconductor ambitions are moving from policy documents to factory floors — and that the human dividend of that transition, particularly for women and rural youth, is becoming a central part of the political narrative.