The first India-made semiconductor chips will roll out from Micron Technology’s Sanand packaging unit in the first half of 2025, majority of which will be exported from the first day itself, said Micron India’s managing director Anand Ramamoorthy in an interaction with Mint.
“We expect to have products rollout early next year, in the first half, which is a very good turnaround given that we had announced this whole engagement in the middle of last year,” he said.
“No factory in India will ever be building for India only. It will be a small part, and bulk of it will be for exports and that’s actually a good thing because we want our factories to be globally viable,” he added.
The top executive said that the chips could be used in several sectors that they operate in, including those of data centers, smartphones, notebooks and IoT, but the allocation would be decided closer to final production.
“We want to serve as all customers, how we route those bits into different verticals will be based on various factors like turnaround time, pricing dynamics, customer needs, their inventory position, so we have to be agile. Overtime, all the verticals that will be serviced (from here),” he added.
Micron could also look at new opportunities in two-wheeler electric vehicles and from government contracts that were unique to the Indian market, he added.
In response to question on working with the Tata Electronics’ semiconductor fabrication units coming up in Assam and Gujarat, Ramamoorthy said that some partnerships could emerge with the group companies since they were already customers.
“We (have) worked with the Tata Group companies, many of them are customers which we will continue to and the right time we might even explore there is something more we can do in terms of taking our product lines into their factories, but that’s too early and not discussed yet,” he said.
He added that Micron was in discussions with vendors to bring semiconductor supply chain to India, with one of its key suppliers Simmtech, which makes substrates, beginning its set up in the same location. Ramamoorthy said that its suppliers will come to India and the strategic ones may be co-located in Gujarat.
“Now they’re seeing that there are more announcements coming in the state of Gujarat, they realize that there are more opportunities for all of them. We will provide all the fair chances and recommendation but they will work with the government on what kind of support and incentive they can get. Our job is to certainly showcase our supplier vendor network or engineering footprint,” he said.
He also noted that the vendors would not be solely supplying to Micron in India but to locations across the world where Micron plants are situated.
US-based Micron Technology is the first player that sets up its assembly plants in India under the government’s $10-billion financial incentive scheme for semiconductor fabrication and assembly in the country.
Micron is setting up a 1.4 million sq ft assembly, testing, monitoring and packaging (ATMP) plant, which will be the first of several plants that will come up in the country over the next decade.
The central and state governments are giving $1.95 billion in financial support for the new plant, while the rest of the investment of $825 million will be borne by Micron.
Ramamoorthy said that Micron will generate 5,000 direct and 15,000 indirect jobs over the next four to five years. The company already has just over 4,000 people working in its Hyderabad and Bengaluru centers where most of its research and development takes place.
