US Chipmaker Micron Technology’s planned investment in India to set up a semiconductor packaging plant has spurred interest from other chipmaking companies in the sector, with some of them actively talking to the Centre about their potential investment plans, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar told The Indian Express.
“At least five packaging companies have reached out to us post the Micron announcement to explore a packaging plant in India. I can’t tell you the names right now, but companies that specialise in compound fabs and and at least one more memory maker like Micron have also showed interest in setting up a plant in the country,” Chandrasekhar told this paper on the sidelines of the government’s flagship chip event SemiconIndia 2023.
In June, Micron announced that it will set up a $2.75 billion assembly and testing plant in Gujarat, in what was the first marquee name to officially commit investment in India under the country’s $10 billion chip incentive scheme.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Indian Express had earlier reported that South Korean memory major SK Hynix was also considering India’s scheme to set up a packaging plant in the country, similar to that of Micron.
Also Read | Why India’s semiconductor manufacturing industry is yet to take off
Finalising these deals could be a major win for the country, especially after the setback its chip plans faced following the breakup of the Vedanta-Foxconn joint venture.
Chandrasekhar also said that apart from manufacturing, the government is also focusing on increasing chip design capabilities domestically, with a view to create Indian-owned intellectual property. To that end, he is considering expanding the ambit of the current design-linked incentive scheme to bigger companies— both domestic and foreign.
“We are envisaging that if there is a big Indian or big foreign company that wants to do chip design in India, we should allow the future design scheme to support them too,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Expected outcome of the future design DLI is that we have more indigenously designed chips, especially in AI, in new cutting edge areas, data centres and so on,” Chandrasekhar said, adding that there is no reason not to support chip design proposals such as next AI accelerator chip, IoT chip, etc, of big companies.
Also Read | India will be your trusted global partner, PM promises semiconductor makers
The government has kept aside Rs 1,000 crore for the chip design scheme. As part of the scheme, the government will reimburse 50 per cent of the design-related expenditure incurred by startups with a ceiling of Rs 15 crore. Besides, the government will also provide deployment-linked incentives of 4-6 per cent of net sales turnover over five years subject to a ceiling of Rs 30 crore per application.
“Instead of saying that the DLI scheme is only for startups, we could say anybody who has a chip design can apply as long as it is an original chip that is going to go into an application, and the intellectual property (IP) is Indian. We will look at supporting them financially,” Chandrasekhar said.
ADVERTISEMENT
However, he clarified that chip design companies that do not contribute in Indian-firms co-owning intellectual property will not be considered under the expected expansion of the plan.