“India is set to become a prominent semiconductor manufacturing hub. The three facilities will drive economic growth and foster innovation,” he said in a virtual address during the foundation ceremony.
Among the three projects is India’s first commercial semiconductor fabrication unit to be set up by Tata Electronics Pvt. Ltd (TEPL) and Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (PSMC), which the PM said will play a key role in making India a semiconductor hub.
Foundation stones were laid for the ₹91,000-crore semiconductor fabrication facility by TEPL-PSMC at the Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR), Gujarat; a ₹27,000-crore outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) facility at Morigaon, Assam also by TEPL; and a ₹7,600-crore OSAT facility at Sanand, Gujarat, by CG Power and Industrial Solutions, in a joint venture with Renesas Electronics Corporation of Japan and Stars Microelectronics of Thailand.
The Centre and state governments will together provide a subsidy of nearly 70% of the cost of setting up these plants.
“We’re not just making investments; we’re also spending heavily to promote research and innovation in the semiconductor sector. Today is a historic day. These projects in Gujarat and Assam will make the country a manufacturing hub for the world,” Modi said.
The three facilities will be in addition to American chipmaker Micron Technology’s high-end semiconductor packaging and testing unit at Sanand, with an investment of $2.5 billion. India’s first such unit is expected to be operational by late 2024, having started building up in September last year. The total investment from the four projects stands at about ₹1.5 trillion.
“In December 2026, the first chip from the Dholera plant will be produced. In December 2024, the first chip will be produced from the Sanand plant,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for IT, telecom and railways, on the sidelines of the event.
India’s semiconductor fab capacity will touch 180,000 wafers a month, taking into account existing proposals including a $11.5-billion semiconductor fab plant by Tower Semiconductor and the approved projects of TEPL-PSMC and CG Power-Renesas, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, told mediapersons. Chandrasekhar added that the Tata OSAT facility in Assam will produce chips for major companies such as IBM and Tesla. “They have developed their own proprietary packaging technologies and manufacturing lines, they expect to have IBM and Tesla as their customers, as CM of Assam said, which I think is a huge additional milestone,” he said.
N. Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons said that commercial production of chips from India’s first semiconductor fabrication unit will start by 2026, and it will produce chips from 28 nm and upwards. The Tata honcho said the first indigenous assembly unit in Assam may go live by late 2025 or early 2026, which will serve a variety of sectors from automotive to power to electronics, consumer and medical.
“Semicon is the foundational industry for everything digital. We will create more than 50,000 jobs and this is just the beginning,” Chandrasekaran said on the sidelines of the foundation laying ceremony in Dholera on Wednesday. In Assam, the group is targeting to create 25,000 additional jobs.
The semicon plants will be very important for India, in the light of chip shortages during the pandemic, which led to the realization of India’s dependency on international supply chains, the top executive said, adding that domestic semiconductor industry was integral to indigenous industry, whereas semicon chips had a defining role to play in every industry, be it auto, AI, defence, green tech, health, and others.
Modi said that after missing out on the first three industrial revolutions due to various reasons, India is now moving with an intention to lead Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution and, therefore, stressed on the need for speedy execution that the government was undertaking. He underlined the pace of execution by sharing that the announcement of the semiconductor mission was made two years ago, followed by MoUs signed in the past few months and now the foundation stones for three projects are being laid. “India commits, India delivers, and democracy delivers,” said PM Modi.
With only a handful of nations manufacturing semiconductors, the prime minister emphasized the need for a reliable supply chain after the disruptions caused by the covid pandemic. Elaborating on future plans where India is primed to take on commercial production for the semiconductor sector, he said, “The day is not far when India will become a global power in the manufacture of products for the semiconductor sector.”
He also noted that India will gain a strategic advantage in the future from policy decisions taken to improve ease of doing business and simplification of laws.
Noting that India’s semiconductor plans were first envisioned during the 1960s, he lamented the inability of the previous governments to act upon them due to a lack of will and the effort. Throwing light on the forward-thinking approach of the present government, the prime minister mentioned semiconductor manufacturing with ambitions to compete with developed countries.
“All these efforts, all these projects, are taking India closer to the goal of development. And certainly, these three projects of today will also have a big role in this,” PM Modi added, pointing to India’s strides in areas of defence, agriculture, space and nuclear energy.
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Published: 13 Mar 2024, 10:02 PM IST
