India-US ties will shape future of tech; semiconductor announcements to create 80,000 jobs: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The Minister of State for Electronics and IT termed the announcements by Micron Technology, Applied Materials and Lam Research as a “significant and meaningful milestone” and “central piece” in the growth semiconductor ecosystem in the country.

“These three investment decisions will create a minimum of 80,000 jobs directly in my estimate and indirectly the numbers could be much higher. More than that it will be a catalyst to the overall electronics and semiconductor ecosystem,” Chandrasekhar said.

US memory chip firm Micron Technology will set up its semiconductor assembly and test plant in Gujarat entailing a total investment of USD 2.75 billion (around Rs 22,540 crore), the company said on Thursday.

The total cost of the plant comprises USD 825 million (around Rs 6,760 crore) from Micron and the rest from the government in two phases.

Micron said that the plant will create up to 5,000 new direct jobs and 15,000 community jobs over the next several years.

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Semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials plans to invest USD 400 million in the next four years to build a collaborative engineering centre in Bengaluru. The centre will focus on the development and commercialisation of technologies for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Lam Research proposes to train 60,000 Indian engineers through its Semiverse Solution virtual fabrication platform to accelerate India’s semiconductor education and workforce development goals.

“The PM’s vision is to make India a central presence in the global semiconductor value chain. And India is slowly and surely, after 75 years of being totally absent from the semiconductor space, becoming a growing force in the semiconductor ecosystem…from design to talent, and packaging to research and soon-to-be in Fab,” he said.

The Minister termed Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a “force multiplier” and kinetic enabler of the digital economy, governance, and sectors like healthcare and education.

“We are clearly focused on AI. I feel confident that India-US partnership will shape the future of AI in many ways including use cases and tech innovation,” the minister said.

In areas of AI (Artificial Intelligence), high-performance computing, the partnership between India and the US will shape the future of technology.

“The four areas of AI, high-performance computing, semiconductors and quantum are critical emerging technologies that will shape future of world, of global economies and lives of consumers and enterprise. And the fact that India and US are going partner and help in shaping the future of these critical technologies is a tremedous news not just for India, but for the world,” he said.

Asked about the status of Vedanta-Foxconn proposal, the Minister said it is “under appraisal”.

“We have opened the window and also changed the policy a bit, where we are also inviting mature nodes. I am sure that in the coming weeks and months, we will also get fab proposals, and we will evaluate them,” Chandrasekhar said.

His comments come amid the Prime Minister’s momentous and historic visit to the US, which has given a boost to the diplomatic, economic and trade ties between both nations.

According to a joint statement released on Friday, India and the US will focus on measures to facilitate greater technology sharing, co-production opportunities with semiconductor, 5G and 6G telecom network, quantum and high-end computing.

The statement dated June 22 released after the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden in the US, said that both governments have committed to promoting policies and adapting regulations to facilitate greater technology sharing, co-development, and co-production opportunities between the US and Indian industry, government, and academic institutions.

“The investment decisions announced by Micron, Applied Materials and Lam Research are important milestones because they set markers in creating these world-class plants that will create memory modules which will go into smartphones, servers, laptops and data Centres.

“As digitisation accelerates, the demand for memory increases, and our PLIs in smartphones and IT hardware incentivises (players) to domestically manufacture memory modules…so it is an absolutely strategic decision that has been made,” the Minister said.