Source: Cailian
Press Release September 23 (Editor 周子意)India hopes to become one of the world's chip powers, but in the unusually fierce competition, this goal seems to be very difficult, and India is the latter in the advanced chip competition, without the domestic chip industry, and the role played in the global supply chain is very limited.
But for now, the country's vigorously pushed "semiconductor plan" aims to change that. This plan is quite bold, and it hopes to establish a complete supply chain in India-from design to manufacturing, testing and packaging.
As of this month, the country has approved 10 semiconductor projects with a total investment of RUB 1.6 trillion (about $18.2 billion), including two semiconductor manufacturing plants and several testing and packaging plants.
Building a sustainable ecosystem
A senior person pointed out that the current progress of India's plan is uneven, and neither the investment scale nor the talent pool are enough to make its chip development plan a reality.
Stephen Ezell, Vice President of Global Innovation Policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said: “India needs more than just a few cylindrical plants or automated testing facilities, it needs a dynamic, deep and long-term sustainable ecosystem.”
Ezell also noted, “Leading semiconductor manufacturers consider up to 500 different factors before making factory investment decisions, including talents, taxes, trade, technology policies, labor costs, and legal and customary policies, in which India has a lot of room for improvement.”
Policy initiatives in New Delhi
In May, the Indian government added a new feature to its chip development plan: launching a program that supports the manufacture of electronic components to address a key bottleneck in a chip industry.
Previously, chip manufacturers had no local market demand in India, as there were few electronic component manufacturers in the country, such as cell phone camera manufacturers.
But the new policy provides financial support to companies that produce local source and non-source electronic components, forming a potential domestic buyer and supplier group that chip manufacturers can use to connect with.
Ezell said, “The Indian government has introduced a number of preferential policies aimed at attracting semiconductor manufacturers to India,” but he stressed that “this kind of investment cannot last forever.”
The long road.
At present, India’s largest chip project is a semiconductor manufacturing plant worth 91 billion rupees (about $11 billion) in Gujarat, in cooperation with Tata Electronics and United Electronics.
Tata Electronics said the plant will produce integrated circuits for power management, display drives, microcontrollers, and high-performance computing logic chips that can be used in industries such as artificial intelligence, automotive, computing and data storage.
In addition, the Class-SiC mill in the UK has also partnered with the SiCSem Semiconductor Company in India to establish the country’s first commercial compound semiconductor plant in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
According to information released by the Indian government, these composite semiconductors can be used in fields such as missiles, defense equipment, electric vehicles, household appliances and solar inverters.
Sujay Shetty, head of semiconductor business at PricewaterhouseCoopers India, said, "The next three to four years will be a critical period to advance India's semiconductor development goals."
Shetty also noted that building a silicon chip manufacturing plant and overcoming all kinds of technological and infrastructure challenges beyond the scope of incentives would be an important milestone.
In addition to chip manufacturing plants, many medium-sized companies in India have also shown interest in setting up chip testing and packaging sectors. Some Indian corporate groups have also joined the field because of higher profit rates and lower capital investment requirements compared to chip manufacturing plants.
Shetty believes that "the semiconductor assembly and testing outsourcing business (OSAT) is a major opportunity for India, but clarifying market access conditions and demand channels is crucial to achieve sustained growth."
Success in this field will enable India to enter the global chip industry, but the country still has a long way to go before realizing local development and manufacturing of cutting-edge chip technologies (such as 2nm semiconductors).