Kaynes Semicon To Invest INR 4,000 Crore On OSAT/ATMP The investment is expected to create around 1,000-plus jobs
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Kaynes Semicon, a subsidiary of Kaynes Technology, will invest INR 4,000 crore to set up a semiconductor OSAT/ATMP (assembly, testing, marking and packaging) in the next one to two years. Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Bhubaneswar are the preferred locations for setting up the facility. "The investment will create around 1,000-plus jobs and in the next couple of months we are expecting the final approval from the government," said Raghu Panicker, CEO, Kaynes SemiCon.
The semiconductor industry comprises companies that design, fabricate, assemble, test, and supply semiconductors that are suitable for various applications. At present, India employs around 20 per cent of the global chip design talent pool. "We have mastered the art of doing chip design in the last 30 years and we are a strong player second to none. The coming together of the government, academia and venture capitals helped in creating the ecosystem for semiconductor chip design and startups," he added.
Additionally, Kaynes Technology would be investing around INR 200 crore in its research and development for OSAT projects. Top semiconductor manufacturers have their largest R&D centers in India leveraging the high quality of talent to develop chip designs and provide engineering support.
India's automotive industry is growing and semiconductor applications in electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and in-car entertainment systems present significant opportunities, "We are working with customers for co-package optics (CPO) and we are addressing the power segment. Electric vehicles is one of the most prominent sectors and along with it we are also exploring opportunities in other industrial sectors such as sensor signal processing, high-end computing, among others," he explained.
Sharing insights into why the backend of semiconductor manufacturing is gaining popularity, Panicker, said, "Backend of the semiconductor manufacturing is more people centric and less capital intensive than silicon fabrication. It is easier to get technology partners from south east Asia who are willing to work together."
Kaynes Technology is also investing in a bare board printed circuit board plant with HDI (High-density Interconnect) technology; the company has already raised money for this investment. "We are actively looking at investment in silicon carbide fab, silicon fab and display fab. The silicon carbide fab will have close to 100 crore investment, the silicon fab will have an European tech partner and display fab will have a Japanese tech partner," according to sources aware of the matter.
Kaynes Technology is a 38-year-old electronics manufacturing services company with manufacturing infrastructure in Mysuru, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Manesar and Parwanoo with service centers in Mumbai and Kochi.
While India has been strong in design, the country would be making strides in fab manufacturing. In December 2021, the Indian government earmarked INR 2,30,000 crore to position India as global hub for electronics manufacturing with semiconductors as the foundational building block. An outlay of INR 76,000 crore was allocated for the development of semiconductors and display manufacturing ecosystem in India.