Delhi NCR delivers the chips
Representative photo
About a decade ago, German auto major BMW was looking to design a chip for its connected car ecosystem – but they had doubts about handing over the task to a design centre in India, let alone in Noida. But as it turned out, the project was successfully completed by the Noida-based team of Freescale Semiconductor, proving that the region had both the talent and the expertise to compete on the global stage.
The foundations for this success were actually laid decades earlier. In the late 1980s. European chip major STMicroelectronics (ST) was among the first companies to recognise the potential of
Indian engineering talent
, setting up operations in Noida. American chip maker Freescale Semiconductor (later acquired by Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors, which has design centres in India) and Cadence Design Systems were also among the early movers in Delhi NCR. And just this month, Japan's Renesas Electronics set up 3 nm chip design centres in Noida and Bengaluru.
Today, the region is home to a few dozen chip design centers. The region's proximity to top engineering institutes such as IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, BITS Pilani, IIIT Delhi, and Delhi Technological University has ensured a steady influx of skilled professionals.
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STMicroelectronics began building a chip design team by training young engineers in Europe. Their early faith in Indian talent laid the groundwork for what is now a robust R&D centre in Greater Noida – their largest design centre outside Europe. According to Vivek Sharma, MD of the India unit, the Greater Noida campus today supports global chip design activities including system-on-chip (SoC), architecture, IC layout, circuit design, and silicon validation. 'We produce about 50 patents annually. The teams here contribute to automotive, industrial, personal electronics and other applications,' he says.
Cadence's Noida centre has grown to become its largest R&D hub outside the US. The company has 4,300 employees in India at five locations: Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad.
'We specialise in developing software tools and platforms for electronic design automation (EDA) which support the entire chip and system design process,' says Jaswinder Ahuja, corporate VP and India MD. Cadence tools developed in India are used globally for circuit design, layout, verification, and packaging – including complex 3D IC designs.
Taiwan's chip maker MediaTek set up shop in India in 2004 and now runs two major R&D centres, in Noida and Bengaluru. The Noida team focuses on software design for smart TVs, Chromebooks, Android system software, wireless communication and other products. 'We actively file patents from our India centres,' says Anku Jain, MD of MediaTek India. He credits local talent, especially in protocol stack development and embedded systems, for enabling growth. The company is now expanding into automotive and IoT.
Qualcomm, another major chip player, has built up strong operations in India including Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Qualcomm India president Savi Soin says, 'In regions like Delhi NCR and across our sites in India we are building diverse teams that reflect the complexity and scale of Qualcomm's innovation engine.' India plays a pivotal role in chip innovation, including in AI, ondevice intelligence, and connectivity. The company's collaborative work with customers and startups is part of a broader push to develop scalable solutions from India for the local, regional and world markets.
Why Delhi NCR?
One big reason is, as we said before, proximity to top engineering institutions. Sharma of ST notes, 'The region has always had strong engineering talent, and good international connectivity made it a natural fit for global collaboration.' Vivek Tyagi, a veteran of the semiconductor space and MD of Analog Devices India, says once a few major companies – like ST and Motorola – came in, it was natural for others to follow. That in turn created more talent.
The ecosystem has today matured substantially. ST's Greater Noida campus now hosts the Da Vinci Innovation Studio, which connects startups, universities, and ST teams to build collaborative strengths. Qualcomm runs mentorship programmes and collaborates with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to help strengthen India's IP and chip ecosystem. All of this is translating into intellectual property and real business impact. From Qualcomm's Snapdragon platforms to AI workloads on edge devices, engineers here are deeply involved. As global demand for semiconductors rises and nations push for supply chain resilience, India's, particularly Delhi NCR's role is growing. The centres here are key to the next generation of chip innovation.
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