Fab Dreams

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Rs 30,152 crore in investments over 10 years in chip and liquid-crystal display factories. The first proposal envisages setting up of a semiconductor wafer fabrication plant with assembly, test, mark and packaging facility. Another proposal is to manufacture poly-silicon, single crystal/multi crystalline ingots, solar grade wafers and modules with a capacity of 1 giga watt.

Videocon Industries is also planning to set up an LCD fabrication plant with an investment of about Rs 8,000 crore. Other proposals include Signet Solar Inc’s to set up solar photovoltaic and associated products manufacturing plant with an investment of Rs 9,672 crore and Moser Baer PV Technologies India Ltd’s proposal for silicon cells, modules and thin film concentrators facility, with a Rs 6,000-crore investment. KSK Energy Ventures Pvt Ltd intends to set up a solar panel facility with an investment of Rs 3,211 crore while Titan Energy System Ltd proposes to set up a solar cells manufacturing unit with an investment of Rs 5,880 crore.

“The government has given an in-principle approval to five other projects worth a further investment of Rs 27,634.87 crore . Yet another five proposals, also worth between Rs 23,687.03 crore and Rs 27,634.87 crore are under active consideration. The in-principle allotments have been given to five other Indian companies, which include Chandradeep Solar for an R&D unit, Neotech Solutions, Photon Energy Systems, Surana Ventures and RamTerra Solar Pvt. Ltd for several PV modules unit,” says Poornima Shenoy, president, India Semiconductor Association (ISA).

This might sound impressive, but one must remember that these are mere proposals and not concrete plans. Secondly, all these investments are envisaged over a period of 10 years. In effect, it means that there would be no fabs up and running at least till 2015. Thirdly, the proposals received are for manufacture of wide variety of items like polysilicon, single/multi-crystalline ingots, wafers, solar cells, solar photovoltaic modules (SPV) liquid crystal display (LCD), integrated circuits-advanced logic/memory/embedded system on chip including assembly, test, mar and packaging facility for semiconductor devices.

Typically in a fab, these products are seen as run-of-the-mill and at the lower-end. If the trends are any indication, the next generation chips would have multifunctional processors cores. Fab units in China and Taiwan are not set up to capture the software that goes into the chips. Isn’t there an opportunity for India round the corner?