Aim to be end-to-end player in electronics value chain: Tata Electronics

With the largest and most active crowd at the Tata booth, it was clear that Tata would be a highlight of India’s first Semicon Summit, starting September 11 at India Expo Mart, Greater Noida. As the only Indian company delivering an inaugural address and keynote presentation Tata Electronics and other Tata Group companies unveiled their semiconductor plans on Day 1 of the Semicon India summit, and here’s all that you should know.

“Our vision is to become an end-to-end player in the electronics value chain,” says Srinivas Satya, Supplier Head of Tata Electronics, during his keynote presentation today at the summit.

“Even with Tata's diversified portfolio, Electronics and Semiconductors is one of the five focus areas or growth areas that Tata Group is pushing right now,” Satya adds.

From dabbling in design services for making chips to assembling and packaging them to finally deploy its already well-established EMS vertical for the combining of components needed to go along with the chip into semiconductor devices, Satya said that the company is aiming for a sustainable manufacturing electronics ecosystem in the country.

Chip making is a team sport, as per the MD of Tata Electronics, who believes that these semiconductor hubs with world-class infrastructure will have a lasting impact on the country. “Semiconductors are fundamental in building digital infrastructure, as is steel to physical infrastructure,” says Randhir Thakur during his inaugural address at the summit.

He adds that the semiconductor industry will have a multiplier effect on job creation as every semiconductor job will create 10 additional jobs in the ecosystem. “This industry is complex and requires extraordinary talent. We will create 50,000 jobs as part of this journey, this is just the beginning,” says Thakur.

Tata’s existing semiconductor capacity

Tata Electronics has four EMS facilities in Southern India this includes an EMS System Facility in Narsapura, a system EMS and component EMS facility in Hosur, and an OSAT facility in Vemagal Karnataka. Srinivasa Satya shared that the company plans to replicate the Bangalore OSAT model to the Assam Greenfield OSAT facility, which recently received approval from the Centre in February of this year.

“Our strategy is to take what we have done and demonstrated at the site in Bangalore and scale it up for our Assam facility,” says Satya. The OSAT facility in Vemagal, Satya notes, is an example of record execution speed from site acquisition to commercial production within 6 months. “We plan to achieve similar scale and speed in the foundry and the OSAT facility,” he adds.

How much has the Dholera fab progressed?

Satya provided an update on the progress of individual facilities, highlighting key details about the Dholera fab. The design and construction of the new greenfield foundry in Dholera are underway. The facility is expected to start producing wafers by 2026, with an initial capacity of over 50,000 wafers per month. These will be 12-inch wafers, available in five technology variants ranging from 28 nm to 110 nm, provided by Taiwan’s PSMC. The output generated from the foundry will target semiconductor chips for applications such as Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs) for mobile devices and automotive systems, as well as HPC logic for communication and industrial sectors.

The infrastructure of the foundry will include provisions for expansion, with plans for additional fabs to be developed in future. Block 3 of the site is set to be dedicated to engaging with ecosystem partners, offering the largest area for supplier collaborations. By the end of this year, the project is expected to begin technical evaluations, followed by order placements within the next three to four months.

“Finally, while it is a 28 nm beyond fab, it is going to be an AI-enabled fab right from when we build it to have AI capability and smart manufacturing,” Satya says.