The Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) expects the semiconductor design industry in India to reach $10.6 billion in revenues in 2012, growing at 17% annually. Pradip K Dutta, who took over as chairman of the ISA last week, tells FE?s Ajay Sukumaran that he expects much of ISA?s focus this year to be on getting crucial support from the government for promoting domestic manufacturing.
What will be your focus areas and priorities as ISA chairman?
I don?t believe in changing our focus every year. Back in December 2009, our body worked on a task force set up by the Department of Information Technology (DIT). When we did that study, we found in 2009 we were consuming $45 billion of electronics and that was growing to $400 billion by 2020, and 80% of all that is imported right now. If we continue on the same track, it will be over $300 billion of import and that would be such a huge bill that it will be unsustainable. So, we need local manufacturing. DIT went rigorously into each one of the recommendations and came up with a set of policy documentations.
What ISA wants to do is work as a knowledge partner with DIT, Department of Telecommunications and other nodal departments and ministries to operationalise these things. India does not have a dearth of policies, but taking those policies and making them work and bear results, that is, I think, where we are going to be spending some of our efforts this year.
Government support for start-ups is a key area that ISA has been working on. Can you give me a perspective?
There are so many opportunities of targeting different segments of the industry whether it is consumer, wireless, telecom, education, agriculture or water management. Our goal is that, let?s say by 2020, there should be at least 50 different companies each worth about $200 million.
Can you give me a sense of the intellectual property (IP) being generated in India?
One of the reasons why we are seeing growth of semiconductor design revenue in India is because people have a lot of confidence on IP protection in India. There are a lot of multinational companies working in India, they are doing a lot of state-of-the-art designs but those IPs are not resident in India. We said by year 2012 we will have $10 billion worth of semiconductor design. How much percentage of the IP is resident in India I don?t know. I would say 20-30% of that could be Indian IPs. And we expect to see that grow. We want to see really more Indian fables companies. I think if the semiconductor design revenue is growing at 17%, the growth of Indian IP companies should be 30%-40%.
You say the need is for a national mission for electronics such as the National Solar Mission, which, incidentally, would include a sub segment within ISA. How do you bring the focus around to electronics?
Electronics is an enabler for all of these things. The ISA is focussing on using electronics in innovative ways to make either existing devices more efficient or use electronics to design and develop new products and new technology which will make more efficient usage of energy. We have been working very closely with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency. Our first deliverable was a very comprehensive industry report. We feel energy efficiency is one area where India can take a lead role because of the whole business of leapfrogging that we do.