Set up factories here: India's message to semiconductor makers

For three days beginning on Friday, top government officials will be telling the world’s top semiconductor companies during the Semicon India Conference in Bengaluru how India could become a global hub for semiconductor manufacturing and design and why they should invest in the country.

The big names such as Intel, the world’s second largest chipmaker by revenue, TSMC, the largest contract chipmaker, GlobalFoundries, the fourth largest foundry, Tower Semiconductor and memory chip makers Micron Technology and Western Digital will be in attendance.

During the virtual and physical conference, state governments will showcase the plans and incentives they have devised to persuade the companies to set up chip and display plants.

The virtual presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will inaugurate the event, is a measure of the event’s importance to the government. Modi will lay out the design and manufacturing opportunity in India in the semiconductor ecosystem. The conference also has academic, social institutions and the industry as partners.

India hopes the conference will alter the lukewarm response it has received so far to its Semicon Mission, which offers incentives of over Rs 76,000 crore for the setting up of fabrication and display plants in India.

Global chip makers have not responded with proposals although companies such as Sterlite (for display and chip making) and Rajesh Exports (for display plants) and a few less well-known firms such as ISMC Analog Fab, led by the Next Orbit Ventures Fund, have submitted proposals.

A few days ago, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, during a visit to the US, made a strong pitch to the leading chip companies to invest in India.

Also present will be Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, and Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister of communications. Among industry leaders who will attend the event is Randhir Thakur, president of Intel Foundry Services that was set up under CEO Pat Gelsinger to make chips for others, representing a change in the company’s strategy and reducing the gap with rival TSMC.

Thakur is also an independent director in Tata Electronics, the OSAT company through which the group is making its foray into semiconductors. The company also will be represented by Raja M Koduri, executive vice-president based in the US, and its India country head Nivruti Rai.

Memory chip maker Micron Technology’s global CEO Sanjay Mehrotra is also one of the speakers. Mehrotra co-founded flash memory storage company Sandisk earlier and was the president till the company was sold in 2016.

Western Digital, which makes industry leading flash memory and which bought Sandisk, will be represented by its president, Siva Sivaram.

Also invited is Erez Imberman, vice-president of business development at Israel-based Tower Semiconductor. Intel has bought Tower but the process is still underway.

According to government sources, Tower has signed a technology tie-up with Next Orbit Venture Fund, one of the companies that has applied to the government to set up a chip plant under the incentive scheme.

TSMC will be represented by senior vice-president Sajiv Dalal, based in the US. TSMC has announced a $44-billion investment this year to increase production to deal with global chip shortages.

GlobalFoundries will be represented by Rajesh Nair, vice-president in the US. Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which is a leader in electronic system design, will also be there.

Other companies that are participating are STMicroelectronics, NXP, Renesas and Texas Instruments.

Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana will be represented by officials.