Standing on the cusp of foraying into manufacturing and fabrication of semiconductor chips, the country — apart from the sustained high capital expenditure investment — will also need a strong political will and the right partners globally to ensure that the plan is successful, Sanjay Gupta, India managing director and a vice-president at NXP Semiconductors, said in an interview with Aashish Aryan. Edited excerpts:
There have been plans in the past as well for semiconductor manufacturing. They have not worked. As an industry leader, what do you think is different this time?
One big difference is that the industry this time is kept in loop on major decisions. On every critical juncture, they are keeping us involved, be it on decisions, suggestions. The setting up of India Semiconductor Mission was one of the suggestions from an industry body and that has been done. The government has been receptive of new ideas this time.
What are the three major challenges that lie ahead for India’s semiconductor mission?
Semiconductor manufacturing is a near-impossible goal. I say it is near-impossible because, of the 200-odd countries, only a handful have the semiconductor manufacturing capabilities at high level. So, it must be something extremely difficult, or everyone would have easily done it.
The entry barrier to the industry is one of the biggest challenges. No industry matches the kind of investment that is required for semiconductor manufacturing. It is a capital intensive investment and, that too, for a long run. It has to be patiently run for multiple years before any result starts coming in. We are talking a multi-billion dollar investment into the fabrication units. So, you need the right partners who have patience and the right vision for the long term mission.
The second is that being a very niche technology company, there is very limited talent base across the world. If we talk about how many semiconductor experts are there in the country, it will be a handful of people of India who have deep knowledge of the industry, accumulated over decades.
The story is the same when it comes to finding talent in semiconductor design. Although India is the largest nation for providing semiconductor talent to all the big companies globally, the reality is that the global talent base for this industry is very small. The availability of talent is the second challenge.
Third challenge is scaling up of the plan and and putting in the right foundation in place. Skill India and Startup India will be very crucial for India to gain the theoretical and practical knowledge. India has no dearth of talent when it comes to semiconductor design. I cannot think of a country which does not have a design space in India.
Another challenge, apart from these, is the political will. Such a massive effort requires that involvement of masses and the government has to take that initiative.
Does the government’s assurance of providing support for semiconductor talent help when it comes to talent?
If you need to build a toy from 10 Lego blocks and only two are in the right place and nobody is working on the rest of the eight blocks, you work in isolation. Some of the activities in silos would be successful but, by and large, as a project it will fail. That was the case in India in the past. Today, all the stakeholders have a common goal.
This will result in a big success in time to come.
Would NXP be open to investing in India?
Multi-billion dollar investments are very crucial to any company. The government of India has reached out to us and we are discussing it at various levels. India is one of the largest design centres for NXP globally. We have roughly 3,000 engineers working at our four locations: Noida, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. All the people are working on cutting-edge technologies.
As long as we continue to innovate and deliver, we will continue to grow, both as as design centre and as a country.
