L. Krishnan and the Quiet Craft of Building India's Semiconductor Future

In the corridors of India's emerging chip industry, certain names circulate with the weight of quiet accomplishment. L. Krishnan is one of them. Not a household name, perhaps, but among those who understand how a nation moves from assembling electronics to designing the silicon inside them, his work represents something consequential: the patient, unglamorous effort of building technical capability where little existed before.
India's semiconductor ambitions have attracted no shortage of headlines. Government schemes, billion-dollar investments, geopolitical positioning—these narratives write themselves. Yet the actual work of transforming a country with negligible fabrication capacity into a meaningful player in the global chip supply chain depends on people who understand the granular challenges of process engineering, equipment selection, and yield optimization. This is the territory Krishnan has operated in.
From Texas Instruments to Indigenous Capability
Krishnan's career trajectory mirrors India's own evolving relationship with semiconductor technology. His early association with Texas Instruments, which established India's first chip design center in Bangalore in 1984, placed him at the intersection of multinational investment and local talent development. Texas Instruments didn't merely offshore work; it trained a generation of Indian engineers in design methodologies that would later seed domestic startups and research institutions.
What distinguishes figures like Krishnan is their persistence through cycles of policy enthusiasm and neglect. India's first semiconductor fabrication plant, established in Mohali in the 1980s, faltered. Subsequent initiatives—the Semiconductor Complex Limited, various special economic zones—produced mixed results. Through these fluctuations, engineers with deep process knowledge became repositories of institutional memory, carrying forward expertise even when official priorities shifted.
The Specificity of Foundry Operations
Modern semiconductor manufacturing is among the most technically demanding industrial processes humans have devised. A typical fabrication facility involves thousands of individual steps, each requiring precise control of temperature, pressure, chemical purity, and particulate contamination. The transition from research concept to production-worthy process can consume years and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Krishnan's contributions appear to center on this translation from laboratory possibility to manufacturing reality. In the context of India's recent push toward domestic fabrication—with agreements for facilities in Gujarat and Assam—this expertise becomes particularly vital. Building a fab is not merely a construction project. It requires establishing relationships with equipment suppliers, calibrating processes for local conditions, and developing workforces capable of maintaining extraordinary standards of operational discipline.
The difference between a functioning fab and a competitive one often lies in these operational details. Taiwan's TSMC didn't become the world's dominant foundry solely through capital investment; it perfected execution at scale, accumulating process knowledge that competitors struggle to replicate. India's challenge is not merely to build facilities but to cultivate similar depth.
The Geography of Supply Chain Anxiety
The global chip shortage of 2020-2023 exposed vulnerabilities that policymakers had previously acknowledged but rarely addressed. Concentration of advanced manufacturing in Taiwan and South Korea, limited European and American capacity, and China's massive investment program all contributed to a reassessment of semiconductor supply security.
India's positioning in this restructuring is intriguing but uncertain. Its strengths lie in design engineering—Indian professionals contribute substantially to chip architecture and verification at companies worldwide. Manufacturing, however, demands different capabilities: capital intensity, operational excellence, and ecosystem coordination among them.
Figures with Krishnan's experience become bridges between these domains. They understand both the abstraction of design and the materiality of fabrication. They can articulate why a particular cleanroom specification matters, or how thermal management affects yield, in terms that connect engineering decisions to economic outcomes.
The Unfinished Project
India's semiconductor manufacturing ambitions remain, in significant respects, aspirational. Ground has been broken, agreements signed, but producing competitive chips at scale requires sustained execution over years. The history of technology development in developing economies suggests that transfer of equipment and even training is insufficient; genuine capability requires iterative problem-solving, failure and adaptation, and the gradual accumulation of tacit knowledge that resists formal documentation.
In this longer perspective, the work of engineers who have persisted through earlier disappointments takes on added significance. They represent continuity in an endeavor marked by discontinuity, carrying forward lessons that might otherwise be lost. The current wave of investment and enthusiasm will, inevitably, face challenges. When it does, the depth of accumulated experience—embodied in individuals and small teams—will partly determine whether India's semiconductor ambitions prove durable or ephemeral.
The story of L. Krishnan, understood properly, is not one of individual achievement in isolation. It is a window into how technological capability actually develops: slowly, unevenly, through the persistent efforts of people who rarely appear in the narratives that subsequently claim to explain national success.