Tata Group will start manufacturing semiconductors in India within a few years, Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran has said, according to a report by Nikkei Asia. As per the auto-to-steel conglomerate, manufacturing of chipsets in the country will make India a key part of the global chip supply chains.
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According to an interview with the Japanese publication Nikkei Asia, Tata Sons chairman revealed the conglomerate’s plans to launch new businesses in emerging fields such as electric vehicles. The conglomerate will invest $90 billion over 5 years, which will also go into other businesses.
“We have created Tata Electronics, under which we are going to set up a semiconductor assembly testing business,” Chandrasekaran was quoted as saying by the report, referring to an electronic components manufacturer that the group founded two years back.
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“We will have discussions with multiple players,” Chandrasekaran was quoted as saying, raising the possibility of partnerships with existing chipset manufacturers.
The Tata Sons chairman has earlier expressed the company’s interest in foraying into the semiconductor business.
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The Tata Sons chairman was also quoted as saying that the company “look into the possibility of eventually launching an upstream chip fabrication platform.” The upstream process of wafer fabrication is more challenging both technologically and financially than the downstream steps of assembly and testing.
Tata Sons’ semiconductor manufacturing in India is likely to be similar to Vedanta’s deal with Taiwan’s Foxconn, also the world’s biggest electronics manufacturing services giant, to form a joint venture (JV) for manufacturing semiconductors in the country.
To recall, earlier in June, reports said that Vedanta is mulling to invest around $15 billion in a phased manner over the next 5-10 years to build displays and semiconductor chips in the country. The JV will look at setting up a semiconductor manufacturing plant in the next two years. The joint venture between the two companies is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of creating an ecosystem for electronics manufacturing in the country.