Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday announced that semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology, which is setting up its plant in India, will roll out its first chip in the country by December 2024. In June last year, Micron announced an investment of $825 million to set up a new assembly and test facility in Gujarat.
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Speaking on the progress on India's semiconductor push, the minister said Micron made the announcement in Jun 2023 and actual construction started in September 2023. "It's how many days? 90 days, it's a record for anywhere else in the world. This has given huge confidence," Vaishnaw said while speaking to Business Today's Executive Director Rahul Kanwal and Business Today TV's Managing Editor Siddharth Zarabi on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
The minister said that he had panel discussions in Davos with executives from the gas and chemicals industries. "They all said - we are absolutely comfortable with the way the first plant has come. The success of the first plant is very important to give confidence, and that success today is visible. December 2024, we see the first chip rolling out of that plant," he said.
The minister shared this detail a day after HCL Group announced a joint venture with Taiwanese giant Foxconn for semiconductor assembly and test operations in India.
Vaishnaw, under whose watch the government rolled out a Rs 76,000-crore scheme to build a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem in the country, also rejected talks that the world still doesn't seem convinced about India's semiconductor ambitions. He said industry leaders gathered in Davos were amazed at the pace things have moved in India.
The minister said the value chain starts from design, it goes to manufacturing, and then to actual products. In this entire value chain, he said, India is very strong in design. "On the design side, the way the policies are structured, we are maturing from being a back office to a full product designer, and this is a statement from practically five global leaders. They say - the time has come when India's design engineers are actually going out to the customers, taking the concept, and converting that concept into full product. That's not a small statement. Close to 30 per cent of the talent is today in India, so manufacturing is the next corollary of that."
When asked about India's own domestic chip manufacturing capacity and how much the country can replace its imports eventually, the minister said this project is going to be a 10-year journey. "This is not a journey which is for a year or a quarter or a monthly basis. We are starting a new industry from scratch. I can very clearly see that we will gain in both - design and manufacturing."
Referring to his panel discussions at the WEF, Vaishnaw said that somebody was sharing that countries like Taiwan and South Korea had to put so much effort into developing the design ecosystem, which India already has at a very advanced stage. "Today, practically every complex chip is designed partly or fully in India. So that is a very big advantage, which we must leverage upon and use that."
Micron in June last year informed that Phase-1 construction of the new assembly and test facility will start to become operational in late 2024. The US firm said that it expected Phase 2, which would include the construction of a facility similar in scale to Phase 1, to start towards the second half of the decade.