India's Sahasra Semiconductors has begun volume production of Made-in-India Micro SD cards and USB drives for Germany's Hama under a multi-year supply contract. The agreement marks one of the first exports of locally packaged semiconductor memory products from India to Europe, showing measurable progress in the country's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.
While several Indian firms have recently entered the outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) and advanced packaging sectors, most have focused on power modules, logic ICs, or pilot-scale runs. Sahasra's partnership with Hama is different because it brings commercial-scale memory packaging for export, which is a category with stringent performance and reliability standards.
The deal demonstrates that Indian facilities can now deliver tested and packaged NAND-based storage products to international OEMs, using back-end processes such as die bonding, wire bonding, and molding. It also provides one of the first clear examples of India's PLI- and SPECS-backed investments translating into sustained global supply chain participation, not just prototype development.
For India, the move extends semiconductor value creation downstream, bridging the gap between electronics assembly and full-fledged chip fabrication.
While India's OSAT output remains small compared with regional peers such as Vietnam or Taiwan, partnerships like Sahasra's indicate early commercial traction. For global buyers, it signals the emergence of an alternative, small-scale OSAT base outside East Asia for select product classes such as flash memory and eSIMs.
Building packaging capability
At its facility in the state of Rajasthan, Sahasra carries out the entire back-end process, from wafer handling and die bonding to final testing and packaging.
"The production for Hama starts from assembly, then moves on to the testing, followed by marking, and finally is completed with the packaging," Managing Director Varun Manwani said. "The assembly includes Wafer processing, Die Bonding, Wire Bonding, Molding, and Laser Curve Cutting."
While the wafers are imported, the integrated circuits are packaged locally, Manwani added.
Scaling and diversification
The plant in Rajasthan has an installed capacity of about five million units a year. As a start, the company will start at around 5%, then gradually go to around 25% on a year-over-year basis.
"It is a multi-year contract with substantial outlay. It is the 2nd such contract signed this year," Manwani said. "The first one has not been made public fully; the package is undergoing testing and trials, and therefore, we shall make an announcement shortly."
"In the past couple of years of us starting operations, where we started with LED Driver ICs, we have added MicroSD Cards, RFID Chips, eSIM Chips, BLDC ICs & NOR Flash ICs to our portfolio amongst others," Manwani added. "Our versatility also comes from our capability to do customized packages such as QFN, DFN & SOPs. In the years to come, we shall add BGA packages catering to both Memory and Non-Memory segments."
The company's roadmap suggests a shift toward more advanced packaging technologies, expanding beyond traditional assembly into higher-value memory and controller IC categories.
Global partnerships and policy hurdles
Sahasra Group has had working partnerships in the US & EU regions for its EMS operations for many years, and the company is looking to deepen these partnerships further with its semiconductor unit, such as the one with Hama. Several discussions are in the works and shall be shared when they mature into partnerships, Manwani said.
While expanding its export base, Sahasra also pointed to structural challenges that continue to limit India's semiconductor manufacturing scale. "Continuous availability of raw materials and components, along with the specialized skillsets required to operate highly complex machinery."
Additionally, freely imported finished goods create challenges; India must bring in tariffs to protect the newly developing domestic packaging industry to create a level playing field.
"Demand aggregation is a problem, and unless all government procurement and domestic companies don't support the scale will not be available to us," Manwani said. "We have to concentrate on exports to fill the gap, but India's demand must be filled by policy intervention."
The company's comments reflect ongoing concerns among OSAT players about access to components, workforce readiness, and limited domestic demand consolidation, which continue to constrain scale.
Local sourcing and outlook
Sahasra sees local sourcing remaining limited but improving. "We have equipment which is used in the process that is built locally, and also the substrates being used have been designed locally by our engineers," Manwani said.
India's semiconductor strategy remains focused on front-end wafer fabrication, but companies like Sahasra are showing measurable progress in back-end work such as packaging and testing.
By combining locally executed OSAT processes with export-oriented contracts, Sahasra provides one of the first tangible examples of how India can participate in global semiconductor production without relying on foreign assembly hubs.
Article edited by Jack Wu
