China is having perfect fab units, which is due to the network effect that appears from having the complete value chain and this is where India needs to work upon and make it stronger
On the second day of the Semicon India convocation in Bengaluru, Siva Sivaram, president of technology & strategy at Western Digital stated that India’s aim of building a semiconductor fabrication cluster is no longer just a dream loaded in the pipeline, but it is now a possibility without any difficulty. The Fabs or the fabrication units are extremely costly and intricate to build and only a handful of international firms have the potential to operate and construct them.
The President also highlighted that there is no economy in the world that has all the resources for full self-reliance on semiconductors because design, equipment, materials, and technology appear from different countries, while the finished products go to the different markets and because of this security appears from state-of-the-art associations. As per a report from TOI, Sivaram said, “We need to make sure that we are well allied with friendly countries and companies so that we have security. We can’t do all of it ourselves so we need to be aware of our needs and identify industries that are important to us, and we should also play to our strengths, which is our people.”
According to other experts in the conference, at this high time India now must ensure to make its roots solid in the semiconductor supply chain domain. Particularly, the defense electronics require top-notch fabs to assure where we are getting our semiconductors from and that will make the ecosystem more stronger and safe. Justifying the statement above, corporate VP and general manager at Lam Research, Rangesh Raghavan mentioned that China is having perfect fab units, which is due to the network effect that appears from having the complete value chain and this is where India needs to work upon and make it stronger.
As per TOI, Raghavan said, “This incentivises big investments. Otherwise, it becomes very artificial and inefficient when you export chips to another country for packaging, for example, and then bring them back to India. The government’s approach to be broad-based and incentivise all points of the ecosystem is the right way, because India needs every part of the value chain to come together.”
