‘WE WANT HUNGRY TIGERS AND LIONS’
David Reed, CEO of Vedanta-Foxconn Semiconductors, and Akarsh Hebbar, Global MD of Vedanta’s semiconductor and display business, on the group’s fab plans. Edited excerpts:
On Vedanta’s vision for chip and display manufacturing Akarsh Hebbar: India has historically always imported everything. But the fact is that our consumption of electronics went up to $53 billion in 2017-18… [and] about $100 billion today; [and] this is going to become $400 billion in 2027. These are staggering numbers. It has come at a time when we have the talent, an ecosystem that is starting to build up, and we are getting technology partners to build this. Our vision is to make sure that we are building a nucleus for an electronics hub—the next Silicon Valley for India, where we have chips and display glass. And that will start making about 100 companies come around it. It will give us about 21 -25x GDP multipliers. This is to say that right now we’re at some $2,500 per capita, while countries with growing tech firms like Taiwan is at about $25,000 or $35,000 per capita. This is where we will be heading, too, if we start this industry... [with] $16 billion in GST revenue just by these two industries alone. [A] 10 per cent increase in GDP, and we just need to put $3 billion in the ecosystem over the next 10-15 year. If display and semiconductor manufacturing come to India... we will be building 60 per cent of every electronic device inside India. That would make India aatmanirbhar.
On sourcing the right talent David Reed: Our intent is ‘Time is money’. And as semiconductor is not your normal business, you want a problem-solving, execution- and focusdriven workforce. We will hire experienced professionals who have actually done operations, development, processes; have worked in factories. Our intent is to hire the world’s best talent, and then look at India. That’s the nature of the business right now. Each one of the expats is going to have 50 to 75 people they know about around the world that have experience. And they’re going to bring that next layer in. So, for the next three to five years, you’ll have a very heavy, experience-based professional workforce. The second part is to mirror them with the folks that have the hunger, drive, curiosity and problem-solving ability from India. Because eventually this thing is going be 100 per cent Indian.
On Indian talent taking the lead David Reed: Take the areas that are expanding wafer fabs—the US, Germany, all over the world; they have factories, but they don’t have the people. You take India, they have the people, but they don’t have the factories. And we’ll have the people, and we will have an example of several wafer fabs. This is how you’re successful in semiconductors, and then it’ll be an exponential curve.
On Indian talent getting into chip-making David Reed: Apply! You may not be in the position you want, or expect, or aspire to [be in], but you will be looked at. I can’t hire 1,500-1,600 expats. But what I would do is bring in all those Indian experts and mirror them to the expats. Let them get the experience and there’ll be a win-win process. We want to get hungry tigers and lions and plug them into “this is how you do semiconductors successfully.” They’re not excluded. It’s just that I wouldn’t want to pick an inexperienced person and say, now you’re in charge of process integration.