Reflecting on the broader industry landscape, Dr. Rohin noted that while India is playing catch-up in semiconductor infrastructure, key events like SEMICON India provide an essential platform for bridging technological gaps, facilitating tech transfer, and bringing critical ecosystem partners together. As the only dedicated photonics company featured among over 600 exhibitors at the event, LightSpeed Photonics is uniquely positioned to lead photonics-driven innovation across data centers, automotive, and power sectors. Driven by deep R&D efforts out of Hyderabad over the past six years, the company remains committed to fostering strategic collaborations and helping build a resilient, “Made in India, Made for the World” semiconductor supply chain over the next five years.
A major highlight of the discussion was LightSpeed Photonics’ debut showcase of its indigenously developed optical interconnects. Designed specifically to enable high-bandwidth connectivity for AI and high-performance computing systems, these next-generation solutions address crucial bottlenecks in modern data architectures. Dr. Rohin emphasized that beyond indigenous design, the company is actively eyeing local manufacturing partnerships in India to support the fast-growing domestic data-center market.
In a recent interaction, Vaishali Chauhan spoke with Dr. Rohin Y, Founder and CEO of LightSpeed Photonics, to discuss the company’s presence at SEMICON India and its vision for shaping the country’s semiconductor landscape. Highlighting strong footfall and high-value partnerships at the event, Dr. Rohin shared insights on how LightSpeed Photonics is capitalizing on the rapid expansion of India’s high-performance compute and data-center ecosystem.
How has SEMICON India been for your company so far? What kind of response have you received from visitors and customers, and what are some of the key conversations happening at the event?
SEMICON is one of the key events for us because of the partnerships and the ecosystem. The way the world is growing, we are right in the middle of that revolution, and the conversations so far have been fantastic. We have talked to more partners than we imagined. There are not just the planned meetings, but also a lot of organic footfalls, which keeps surprising us with how fast India’s semiconductor ecosystem is growing.
What are you showcasing at SEMICON India, and what are some of the key solutions or developments you would like the industry to know about?
For the first time, we are showcasing in India our indigenously developed optical interconnects, which are next-generation solutions for data centres. These are basically used for high-bandwidth connectivity for AI and high-performance computing systems, and we have seen tremendous interest from a multitude of potential customers.
The opportunities are also lining up for India to manufacture these kinds of products in India, and those are the things we are keenly looking forward to—not just having them indigenously developed and designed, but also gradually working with partners here to manufacture them and cater to the upcoming data-centre ecosystem here.
As we all know, India’s semiconductor ecosystem is developing rapidly. What opportunities are you seeing in the Indian market, and where do you see the strongest potential for your company?
India, as the world is growing with AI data centres, is seeing compute become one of the biggest and fastest-growing sectors. We also see a lot of growth coming from automotive and power.
The industry overall requires a large ecosystem with multiple partners working together. What we are seeing as an opportunity is photonics as both a niche and a core capability to drive many of these applications, whether it is connectivity in data centres or future systems in consumer electronics and automotive.
We see a lot of photonics-based solutions that can be developed. Having been here and indigenously developing many of these technologies with our team in Hyderabad for the last six years, we are seeing a lot of growth opportunities for photonics, specifically within semiconductors.
Out of the 600-plus booths here, I think we are the only photonics company, and it is good to be the first and also to be growing fast in such a domain, which has tremendous opportunities.
What are some key challenges you are seeing in India’s semiconductor ecosystem today, and what role can industry players like your company play in addressing them?
That’s a very good question. Most of the challenges, policymakers and industry partners are very much aware of, and they are trying to solve those by bringing in technology partners.
Most of the semiconductor industry is playing catch-up, for better or worse. We have actually had a lot of history of trying to bring this up many times, but finally, the time has come. Now, because of the lack of infrastructure that was supposed to be developed over many years, we are trying to play catch-up.
There is a lot of technology transfer and know-how that we need to learn from other countries, along with collaborations. Those are the areas where individually, many people are working in different pockets.
What SEMICON India is doing for companies like us is bringing all these partners together, making them sit in a room, understand each other and have a dialogue. That is where LightSpeed Photonics is also looking to take advantage.
We are literally an interconnect company, and the interconnect does not stop at our product level. It is also in our DNA to connect many other ecosystem partners and make this ecosystem grow bigger.
How do you see the semiconductor industry in India evolving over the next few years, and what are your priorities for the Indian market?
I think it will surprise the world. India is not just growing at a tremendous pace in planning, but also in execution. We are seeing that not just at SEMICON, but also in terms of execution—the pace at which projects are picking up and the way products are getting announced.
This is being indigenously developed at a very fast pace, and in the next five years, I think India will be one of the strongest semiconductor supply-chain partners for the world: made in India and made for the world.
