India Energy Security Begins at Home Kitchens
When properly understood, energy security is a portfolio rather than a project. The nation can rely on these strategic petroleum reserves in the event that imports cease. Supply diversity prevents the risk from being concentrated in a single area. For whatever reliance the nation may have, there are other fuels and channels. Furthermore, it is the aspect of the narrative that underlies inflation more and more. The reality that energy security has many ramifications is something that most of us overlook. It is directly related to inflation in India; the two are discussed together.
Just to put things in perspective. Food and household prices behave themselves when LPG is inexpensive. They push back against the RBI’s tolerance band when LPG is costly. The central bank of India has numerous options, but it is unable to reduce the price of LPG imported via a disputed strait. Therefore, the long-term goal is not only to import LPG at a lower cost but also to ensure that the nation’s kitchens have reliable substitutes in case the supply line falters.
The Three Critical Components Behind Induction Technology
The three items that follow appear to be small footnotes to the energy security narrative. They are not small. These three are where the real work begins if India wants to take energy security seriously. In India’s energy tale, there is one particular dependence that the nation can address, one household at a time. LPG is that reliance. India imports the majority of the LPG it burns annually. The portion that the nation does refine is derived from imported crude oil. The entire supply chain passes through the Gulf. Giving households a cooking method that requires no LPG at all is the most efficient way to lower that exposure.
LPG’s Substitute: The Three-Part Issue
Electric cooking is one alternative. In particular, induction cookers, or cooktops, are quick, energy-efficient, and becoming more and more affordable. They operate on a power grid that the nation can supply from sources unrelated to the Strait of Hormuz, such as coal, hydro, nuclear, and solar.
The energy-security swap’s kitchen-side component is the cooker. When Indian homes are able to cook without LPG, the nation’s energy security improves at the level that matters most to households and inflation. This is when the three elements are useful. An induction cooker can be assembled in India. Three of the components cannot be combined into one.
How Induction Cooktops Actually Work
In essence, the induction cooktop is a straightforward device. Beneath a level glass surface is a flat coil of copper wire. A high-frequency magnetic field created by the coil’s current runs through the glass, heating the iron pan on top. The cooking is done using the pan. Except for the areas where the pan touches it, the cooker itself remains chilly. No flame is present.
The Three Critical Components Behind Induction Technology
However, three parts must be present for a tiny countertop appliance to function in this manner. They’re not all exotic.
The switch comes first. The coil’s current is turned on and off roughly 20,000 times per second to create the magnetic field that heats the pan. The most crucial part of the entire appliance is the tiny black, fingernail-sized piece of silicon that switches the switch. It has three pins that protrude. It is referred to by the industry as an insulated gate bipolar transistor, or IGBT. You have a glass-topped box without it.
Microcontrollers: The Brain of Modern Cooktops
The brain comes in second. An induction cooktop must be able to determine whether a pan is on the surface, what temperature it has achieved, whether the timer button has been touched, and when to turn off. A microcontroller, a distinct little black component with numerous additional pins, is the chip that manages all of this. The thermostat in an air conditioner, a microwave timer, and a washing machine cycle are all controlled by the same family of chips. By industry standards, a cooker requires a rather modest version.
Glass-Ceramic Surface: The Most Complex Missing Piece
The surface comes in third. The cooker’s flat black top, where a pan rests, is made of glass, but it’s not regular glass. It must withstand decades of domestic usage, frequent cycling between high heat and room temperature, direct contact with a hot pan, the weight of a heavy stockpot, and the magnetic field beneath it without interfering. This type of glass is referred to in the industry as glass-ceramic.
A surface, a brain, and a switch. The fundamental engineering of all three was established decades ago, so none of them are cutting edge technologies. However, none of the three is now produced in India.
Let’s examine each of these elements independently.
The IGBT should come first. A semiconductor device is the IGBT. It is a tiny piece of silicon, a few millimeters in diameter, that has many layers of doped material built onto it by hundreds of stages within a clean-room facility. This process is known in the industry as semiconductor fabrication, and the facilities themselves are called fabs.
The IGBT’s fundamental design dates back to the 1980s. The initial patents have long ago expired. Any capable power-electronics design firm can use the publicly available reference designs that demonstrate how to construct one as a starting point. The bottleneck is not intellectual property.
IGBT: The Power Switch India Doesn’t Manufacture Yet
The raw stuff isn’t either. Silicon wafers, copper, and trace amounts of doping compounds are the fundamental inputs for an IGBT. High-purity electronic-grade silicon is not industrially refined in India, but wafers are a global commodity that are purchased by all factories worldwide from a small number of specialized suppliers, primarily in Germany and Japan. The same terms are available to Indian manufacturers. Additionally, the raw material is not the bottleneck.
So what is the bottleneck? It’s two things at once.
Fabrication capacity is the first. From groundbreaking to the first wafer, a modern power-semiconductor factory takes three to four years, spends billions of dollars in capital expenditures, and employs a few hundred specialists at full ramp. That is the size of Infineon’s Villach facility in Austria.
Semiconductor Challenges: Capacity vs Demand Visibility
This size of fabrication plant for power semiconductors does not yet exist in India. The two active Indian semiconductor lines, located at the Semiconductor Laboratory in the same city and the Continental Device India (CDIL) facility in Mohali, are smaller and based on distinct process generations.
The line is sized for industrial and automotive applications, the heavier-duty parts that go into cars, charging stations, and solar inverters, not the lighter parts that a kitchen appliance uses. However, CDIL’s expansion under the India Semiconductor Mission, approved last year, will expand its product range to include IGBTs alongside other power devices.
Demand visibility comes in second. A consumer-grade IGBT line can only be profitable if there is a sizable domestic market that can support the production for 15 years. India has a customer base, water heaters, fans, induction cookers, and a larger market for household appliances, but it does not yet have a plan that links demand to industrial investment for these particular uses. No manufacturer of power semiconductors will dedicate a line to cooktop-grade IGBTs without it.
What, therefore, does India truly require in terms of IGBT issues? Neither new raw materials nor new technology. It requires visibility long enough for a manufacturer to commit to it, as well as a fabrication facility large enough for consumer-grade power semiconductors. The best course of action is to designate induction-cooker-grade power semiconductors as a subcategory that qualifies for assistance under the India Semiconductor Mission and to combine that designation with a commitment to demand visibility.
In 2023, Korea adopted this approach, including incorporating power and energy-efficiency-improvement semiconductor innovations within its strategic technology tax credit framework. The Indian equivalent is not a new plan, but rather an update to the guidelines.
Microcontrollers: The Brain of Modern Cooktops
The microcontroller is component number two. The microcontroller comes next. In certain aspects, this problem is simpler than the IGBT, but it ultimately has a distinct complication. In essence, a microcontroller is a tiny computer. A processor, a tiny amount of memory, and a set of input/output pins are all included on a single silicon chip that is smaller than the IGBT. The chip executes straightforward software that takes care of any tasks required by the surrounding device, such as a timer, a thermostat reading, a safety cut-off, or a beep when a button is pressed.
The hardware is inexpensive and mass-produced. The majority of the effort involved in creating a microcontroller device is the firmware, which is the software that operates on the chip and is either written by the appliance manufacturer or purchased from an expert.
Kitchen appliance microcontrollers are manufactured on what the industry refers to as mature-node CMOS silicon process generations, which range in size from 40 to 180 nanometers. These nodes are not innovative. They are operated by foundries worldwide, have been around for decades, and are widely understood. The bottleneck is not technology.
Neither is the raw substance. Microcontrollers are sourced from the same worldwide wafer market that provides IGBT lines, with a small number of specialized suppliers located in Germany and Japan. The same terms apply to purchases made by Indian producers.
How about manufacturing? India is doing better in this area than it is in power semiconductors. Together with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Tata Electronics is constructing the nation’s first commercial-scale wafer factory at Dholera, Gujarat. The mature-node CMOS range that consumer microcontrollers are based on is PSMC’s area of expertise.
India will have a facility theoretically capable of producing the chips required for an induction cooker by the time the Dholera fab is running at full ramp.
Tata-Dholera Fab and India’s Microcontroller Opportunity
An end-market in India is linked to the production of the factory. A final product is not mentioned in the Cabinet release that authorized Tata-Dholera. Microcontrollers are not named. Air conditioners, washing machines, and induction cooktops are not mentioned. Without committing the foundry to any specific client, it mentions a foundry, its capacity, its node range, and its technology partner.
Foundries react to the orders placed by their clients. The Dholera line has no justification for allocating capacity to that market segment in the absence of an Indian contract or offtake commitment that requires induction cooker-grade microcontrollers.
What, therefore, does India truly require in terms of microcontrollers? Not new technology. Not a fresh supply of raw materials. Not even an increase in fabrication capability. For Tata-Dholera to justify allocating a portion of a line to cooker-grade chips, there must be a significant domestic offtake commitment.
Downstream is the appropriate route. Induction cookers could be included as an eligible product in the PLI for white goods, which has been reopened for applications multiple times since its inception in 2021, most recently in late 2025, but still only covers air conditioners and LED lights.
A few hundred crores spread over five years at 4-6% of incremental sales would be sufficient, indicating a minor order of magnitude. As a result, Tata-Dholera has a domestic offtake to consider, and an Indian appliance manufacturer has an incentive to base its goods on chips produced by Tata-Dholera. The modification is a notification revision rather than a new plan, just as the IGBT.
The surface is the third component. Glass-ceramic used in specialty cooktops is not the same as regular glass. When you apply heat to a small area of regular window glass, the glass splits. Do the same with a piece of glass-ceramic cooktop, but nothing happens.
The method is the trick. After the glass is melted and shaped into a flat sheet, it undergoes a controlled second heat treatment that causes small crystals to develop throughout the substance. The end product is a hybrid glass with a ceramic core that combines the thermal stability of ceramic with the optical clarity of glass. The material’s nearly negligible expansion under heat is caused by its composition, which is usually lithium aluminosilicate.
This is where the IGBT and microcontroller stories depart from the glass-ceramic story. India’s bottleneck in the first two was not technology but rather capacity and client commitment. The technique itself is at the center of the glass-ceramic debate.
Cooktop-grade glass-ceramic is produced commercially by three companies worldwide: SCHOTT in Germany, the Saint-Gobain–Corning joint venture EuroKera in France and the US, and Nippon Electric Glass (NEG) in Japan. Each treats the recipe and the process flow as unique knowledge and has dedicated decades to the process, composition, melting profile, crystallization control, and surface finishing.
Therefore, there are three ways to produce cooktop glass-ceramic in India: a licensing agreement with one of the three incumbents, a joint venture with one of them in India, or a domestic technology-development program that develops the process using patient research and public literature.
It is easier to access the raw material side. While some forms of silica sand, alumina, and lithium-bearing minerals are produced in India, high-purity lithium compounds used in specialty glass formulations are usually imported from China, Chile, and Australia.
The capital side is also attainable: the cost of a single new glass-ceramic line is less than half that of a power-semiconductor fabrication plant, costing in the low hundreds of millions of euros and taking three to four years to commission. NEG’s Otsu line extension invested over 6 billion yen for a 25% capacity boost, whereas SCHOTT’s recent tank refurbishment at Mainz committed almost 60 million euros to a single melting tank. A glass-ceramic plant in India is not impeded by capital.
What India Must Do: Three Strategic Policy Actions
The Policy Responses
India does require a set of policies centered on the technology issue. There are three components to the package.
First, a significant portion of the project cost for specialty glass capacity intended for cooktop applications is covered by capital support.
Second, specific incentives to entice one of the three international incumbents to establish a manufacturing arrangement in India through a joint venture, a license agreement, or a wholly owned Indian subsidiary.
Third, a parallel domestic R&D track that runs alongside the licensing or joint-venture channels and provides funding to labs and academic institutions to develop glass-ceramic process know-how over an extended period.
There are multiple ways to construct this package. By adding cooktop glass-ceramic to its list of qualifying items, it might be included in the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme. It might be integrated as a line of specialty materials within the India Semiconductor Mission. Alternatively, it might be a stand-alone plan. With a few thousand crores spread over ten years, the capital size is quite small. India would be the first to try a policy package focused on glass-ceramic induction cooktops; there is no international model to emulate.
Three elements, three distinct issues, and three distinct policy solutions.
The India Semiconductor Mission must designate induction-cooker power semiconductors as a suitable subcategory for the induction-cooker IGBT and provide a demand visibility pledge that motivates a manufacturer to dedicate a line. Power and energy-efficiency-improvement chip technologies are named in the primary law in Korea’s K-Chips Act, which was passed in 2023; the Indian counterpart is a guideline amendment.
PLI Scheme and India Semiconductor Mission: The Missing Links
Induction cookers must be added to the PLI scheme for white goods for the legacy-node consumer microcontroller to be eligible. By the time it ramps up, Tata Electronics’ Dholera facility, in collaboration with Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, will be technically ready to produce everything an induction cooker requires. Today, a domestic offtake commitment is lacking. That difference would be eliminated with a notification adjustment to PLI white products, at four to six percent on incremental sales over five years.
In order to bring one of the three global incumbents into a production agreement in India, the specialty cooktop glass-ceramic requires a policy package centered around the technological question, capital support for a greenfield line, specific incentives, and a parallel domestic research-and-development track.
The package can be integrated into the India Semiconductor Mission as a line of specialist materials, sit inside the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme, or operate independently. The capital scale is modest—a few thousand crores spread over ten years.
These seem to be executive and scheme-design actions rather than primary-law changes, but before any of this goes to the gazette, legal and procurement experts should examine the exact legislative footing, especially for any local-content rule on procurement and any consequential amendment to existing scheme contracts.
Each scenario has a different build cycle: the IGBT line takes a few years, the microcontroller line takes longer, and the glass plant takes more than 20 years. The challenge is to maintain policy alignment long enough for manufacturers to anticipate orders when their new capacity goes online.
Why Energy Security Must Be a Continuous Strategy, Not a Reaction
For as long as it has been an area of energy, the Gulf has seen frequent disturbance. The majority of the 1980s were spent in the Iran-Iraq War. The early 1990s saw the Gulf War. The majority of the 2000s were spent fighting in Iraq. The conflict with Iran started in February and is still ongoing. There will be another in one form or another. India’s energy security cannot be a response to any of these disputes. The project must be ongoing and scaled for both the upcoming disruption and the previous one.
One of the most inexpensive components of that initiative is kitchen energy, which operates below inflation, is used in every home, and depends on three tiny parts that the nation does not already produce. When the next disruption occurs, three policy decisions—a policy package for the cooktop surface, a notification amendment for the microcontroller, and a guideline modification for the IGBT—determine whether the nation’s kitchens are truly Indian.
This article is inspired by and adapted from an analysis published in The Economic Times titled “An unconventional look at India’s energy security: 3 small things that matter more than anything else” on 3rd March 2026.
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