Micron to roll out first India-made chips by early 2025
The first semiconductor chips to be made in India will roll out from US-based Micron Technology Inc.’s unit at Sanand in Gujarat in the first half of 2025, but a majority of these will be exported from the first day itself.
“We expect to have products roll out 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,” said Micron India’s managing director Anand Ramamoorthy in an interaction with Mint.
“No factory in India will ever be building for India only. It will be a small part, and the 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
Micron is the first global semiconductor player to enter India. The country wants to create its own semiconductor manufacturing and chip ecosystem to reduce dependency on imports of the critical component that is used across industries including defence, automobiles and telecommunications.Ramamoorthy said the chips from the Sanand unit could be used in several sectors, including data centres, smartphones, notebooks and the Internet of things, but the allocation would be decided closer to final production.
“We want to serve 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. Over time, all the verticals will be serviced (from here),” he said. Micron could also look at new opportunities in two-wheeler electric vehicles and government contracts that are unique to the Indian market, he added.
On the possibility of working with Tata Electronics Pvt. Ltd’s semiconductor fabrication units coming up in Assam and Gujarat, Ramamoorthy said some partnerships could emerge with Tata group companies since they were already customers.“We (have) worked with the Tata group companies; many of them are customers, which will continue. And, at the right time, we might even explore if 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.
The Sanand unit could be used in several sectors, including data centres, smartphones, notebooks, etc