Sahasra Group is going to be the first company in India to manufacture chips much before Micron
Sahasra Semiconductors, which is a part of Sahasra Group of Industries has now officially told the media that by the end of September or in the first half of October, the firm will commence the commercial manufacturing of Made-in-India memory chips. Sahasra Semiconductors is the home-grown semiconductor manufacturer and is going to be the first company in India to manufacture chips much before Micron, CEO Varun Manwani exclusively told Financial Express.
Manwani said, “We will be the first Indian semiconductor company to start the production of chips. We actually did some trial production in March and the commercial production will start sometime in September and early October."
A year back in the Bhiwadi district of Rajasthan, Sahasra Group has set-up the first semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in the country. From this unit, the company in the beginning will start packaging memory products such as MicroSD cards, chip-on-board, etc and then it will shift its attention to advanced packaging of internal memory chips.
The point to be noted is that Sahasra Group is currently under the benefits of the Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) by which it will grab 25 percent of the fiscal incentives on capital expenditure of the unit. Sahasra’s difference with Micron is that the latter manufactures its own chips, while the former is an Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) firm. It implies that the latter package and assemble chips for other companies.
In an interaction with the FE, Manwani said that currently Sahasra receives orders from SMBs to manufacture semiconductors for them and in the coming years they will look forward to exporting it to other countries. The company has proclaimed an investment of Rs 600 Crore in the coming six years to produce chips and to build the infrastructure. As of now, Sahasra has spent Rs 110 Crore to commence the first phase of the packaging and assembly of chips.
Apart from the chips assembly, the firm has also started designing its own LED driver ICs that it claims its internal intellectual property rights. Moreover, apart from SPECS, the company is also looking to grab the 50 percent incentives under the semiconductor incentive scheme, which the government unleashed in December 2022. “We started working on the fab before the semiconductor scheme was announced. First, we will utilize the investments under the SPECS scheme and then we will apply under the semiconductor incentive scheme,” Manwani further added.
