India Bets on Compound Semiconductors: SiCSem's SiC Fab and Polymatech's GaN Plant

While most of India's chip investment chases silicon, a parallel bet is taking shape in compound semiconductors, the materials that matter for power electronics. Two projects mark the entry, and the strategic logic is the same: skip the bleeding-edge logic race and lead in a high-growth lane instead.

SiCSem's silicon carbide fab and Polymatech's GaN plant

SiCSem, a subsidiary of Archean partnered with the UK's Clas-SiC, is building India's first silicon carbide (SiC) fab plus ATMP at Info Valley, Khordha, Odisha. The facility is sized for 5,000 SiC wafers per month and 8 million packaged units per month, with an India Semiconductor Mission agreement signed on 11 May 2026, operations targeted for 2027-28, and an investment of about ₹2,066.7 crore. Separately, Polymatech has laid the foundation for India's first gallium nitride (GaN) fab at Nava Raipur, a ₹1,143 crore project guided to 10 billion chips per year by 2030. The state-owned SCL Mohali is adding GaN-on-Si HEMT capability with technology from Belgium's IMEC.

Why SiC and GaN

Silicon carbide and gallium nitride are wide-bandgap semiconductors. They switch faster, tolerate higher voltages and temperatures, and waste less energy as heat than conventional silicon, which makes them the materials of choice for electric-vehicle drivetrains and on-board chargers, fast chargers, 5G and 6G radio infrastructure, and grid and renewable-energy power conversion. A HEMT, or high-electron-mobility transistor, is the GaN device structure that delivers these efficiency gains in high-frequency power switching.

The investment thesis is a deliberate leapfrog. Rather than compete with TSMC and Samsung on advanced logic, where India starts decades behind, these projects target a younger, faster-growing market tied directly to electrification and clean energy, where incumbency is thinner and demand is structural. The caveats are standard for first movers: SiC and GaN manufacturing is process-intensive and yield-sensitive, the headline 2030 volume is a target not a commitment, and operations are still one to two years out.