Sandisk Invests $200 Mn A Year in India R&D, Calls For IT Equipment Push

• 21 Sep 2026
• TM Team
• 0 Comments

SanDisk invests about USD 200 million annually in research and development (R&D) in India and has invested roughly USD 2 billion in the country over the past decade, with its India operations increasingly involved in product architecture, design, and carrying out low-volume manufacturing before production moves to factories, a senior company executive said.

SanDisk’s India centre has become an important part of its global product-development network, particularly for flash-memory and solid-state drive (SSD) products.

Kumar said the company designs and architects products in India up to low-volume manufacturing, after which they are transferred to factories. The India centre develops solid-state drives (SSDs) that go into laptops, while enterprise products are developed in India and at other locations. Most of the detailed product work for several lines is done in India from start to finish, he said. 

The India centre has about 3,000 engineers, compared with roughly 7,000–8,000 engineers globally, according to Kumar. That puts India at around 25–30 per cent of SanDisk’s global engineering workforce, highlighting the country’s role in the company’s product development beyond its manufacturing ecosystem.

Kumar said around 60–70 per cent of SanDisk’s products are being developed or built through its India operations. The company supplies memory products for consumer devices as well as cloud and enterprise infrastructure, where flash memory is used to store data in servers and other systems.

Memory Pricing Shifts With AI
The changing demand for memory is also altering the economics of the business. Kumar said memory was historically treated as a commodity, but the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and data-centre infrastructure has increased demand for flash memory and other memory products, allowing suppliers to command better prices.

“Previously the memory prices were like commodity prices, but now the memory and flash memory has got a light under their sun. So, we are actually getting benefit from this,” he said.

Sandisk reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of USD 8.97 billion on 5 August 2026, up 372 per cent from a year earlier. The company said the quarter's revenue was up 51 per cent sequentially, with about two-thirds of that growth coming from higher pricing and one-third from higher volumes.

According to Kumar, AI customers are willing to pay more for memory, which is limiting the supply available for consumer devices such as phones. He said device makers have to match what AI buyers are ready to pay. The effect is visible in personal computers, where the lower end of the market is shrinking, he said. Equipment suppliers are raising prices and concentrating on medium and high-end models.

On supply-chain constraints, Sandisk has secured supplies of components such as double data rate (DDR) memory, which sits alongside its chips on a board. It is also working on designs that need less of it. "We will innovate so that we can get the whole chip, whole system done in a smaller DDR footprint. So, this is how we are working on those, circumventing those supply chain issues," he said.

Push For IT Equipment
For India, the next stage of semiconductor development should focus on building an IT-equipment ecosystem, including laptops, servers and the components that go into them. He said a larger domestic market for complete IT products could create demand for locally manufactured components, including SSDs.

Kumar’s comments come as India expands its semiconductor ecosystem through investments in fabs, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) facilities and electronics manufacturing. Sandisk, however, does not currently have a proposal under the government’s semiconductor programme, he said. Government policy has so far focused heavily on the cellphone ecosystem and could subsequently expand towards IT peripherals and server-related manufacturing. Such a shift, he said, would create a larger role for memory and SSD companies in India.

"It is not about chip making. It is about the focus. Right now, government is focusing very heavily on the cell phone. Probably next, they will think about IT peripherals. We are not in cell phone that much, but if it comes to IT peripherals, server design, then the memory companies and SSDs will become mainstream," he said.

The executive also stressed that semiconductor development should not be measured only by manufacturing capacity. R&D, he said, needs to receive equal attention as India builds out its semiconductor ecosystem, with SanDisk’s existing engineering base providing an example of how product development can be anchored in the country.