During the ongoing Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024, Ashwini Vaishnav, Union Minister for Railway, Communication & Electronics, and IT announced that the Micron’s semiconductor manufacturing plant at Sanand GIDC in Gujarat will give India’s first domestically manufactured semiconductor chip by the end of this year.
Vaishnav said, “Semiconductor is a foundational industry like steel industry that comes along with many other connecting industries. The unprecedented fast speed of setting up of Micron’s manufacturing unit has increased the confidence of the world in the Indian growth story. As a result, one of the largest substrate manufacturing companies in the world, Simmtech has signed a MoU with the government of Gujarat. According to this MoU, complementing Microne’s manufacturing unit, Simmtech will be establishing a substrate manufacturing facility at Sanand GIDC.”
As per the MoU, the Japanese company will be investing Rs 1,250 crore to set up its manufacturing facility in the state. The Gujarat government has allocated an area of 30 acres at Sanand Industrial cluster for the establishment of the proposed manufacturing unit.
Vaishnav said, “Simmtech will start its work within a couple of months and the unit will be ready for production before December 2024. Simmtech has applied for this proposal under the Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) scheme. Under this scheme the company is entitled to have a 25% capital subsidy and it will further get state specific benefits depending on the Electronic manufacturing policy of the government of Gujarat.”
He further said, “The unparalleled experience about the speed and process of establishing the manufacturing unit by Micron and the MoU with Simmtech means that we are moving forward to establishing the semiconductor ecosystem. Furthermore, the announcement by the Tata Sons about establishing a Fab manufacturing unit at Dholera also indicates in the same direction.”
The minister said that the proposed Tata’s fab manufacturing unit will be much more grander on scale compared to the unit being developed by Micron at Sanand GIDC. It should also be mentioned that the Phase 1 of the Microne’s plant will be completely operational by 2025 and the company has started hiring local workforce for its new manufacturing unit. Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO, Micron Technology, said, “We have already hired around 2,000 workers from the domestic talent pool. The training for the new employees is under process at the Micron laboratory in Mohali and at our manufacturing unit in Malaysia.”
Vaishnav also talked about MoUs between NamTech, an industry aligned technical training institute, Microne and Cisco, one of the leading digital communication tech companies. These MoUs are focused on developing a local talent pool capable enough to work in the complex manufacturing and designing process of the semiconductor ecosystem.