Into the semiconductor ambitions die, India III investors

An Empowered Committee set up by the Indian government is working hard to push India into the field of chip manufacturing. The agency recently prepared an advertisement to send potential semiconductor suppliers and investors to set up semiconductor wafers in India. Invitation to Plant Letter of Intent.

The advertisement disclosed some information, including the Indian government will be in the country's 600,000 villages, on the scale of billions of dollars of 3G, WiMax and 4G and other projects, but also will provide 100G broadband for 20,000 colleges and research institutions network.

This advertisement also announced that India already has an infrastructure for semiconductor design. It designs approximately 2,000 chips each year, and has more than 20,000 engineers engaged in chip design and verification. The local VLSI design, board-level and system-level hardware design, coupled with the development of embedded software, has created a market size of US$6.5 billion in 2009 and will climb to US$10.6 billion in 2012.

In terms of human resources, India has the third largest science and technology cultivation base in the world. There are 400 universities in the country, and 200,000 engineering students can be cultivated every year.

This “power and accountability committee” was established in April this year to help India establish at least two fabs at a cost of approximately US$5 billion. After determining the technology category and potential investors, the committee will advise the government on the degree of support for the project. The group's proposal will be submitted to the Indian government on July 31.

Prior to this, SemIndia and Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp were included. The two projects in the group failed to succeed. Up to now, there is still no indication whether the Indian government has already had a preferred location for the construction of a fab.

The IT organization announced in April this year plans to consider the construction of two fabs, including the establishment of a new fab, or the acquisition of an existing plant and its relocation to the local. Even considering the acquisition of IDM's equity - similar to Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund's mode of operation to obtain a controlling stake in Globalfoundries.

By 2020, India’s current $45 billion electronic market is expected to grow to US$400 billion, and its domestic chip demand will be approximately US$50 billion.

All foreign investments can be directly invested in Indian fabs. The local government is formulating a policy that will give priority to government-produced domestically produced electronic products. With financial incentives, the Indian government is expected to assist with the establishment of fab infrastructure.

The Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) agrees with the agency's recommendations but also hopes to provide more details after reviewing its recommendations.

At the same time, the Hindustan Times also reported that Sandisk is considering establishing an assembly plant for digital storage products. SanDisk has set up a design center in India, but the company did not comment on this news.