Tata Group has envisioned semiconductor production in India for a long time. The company is now planning to invest Rs 200 crores to set up a semiconductor plant at Kolar, a city in Karnataka. The new facility will have the technology to develop market-ready chipsets from silicon wafers.
Tata’s semiconductor facility will also create over 150 job opportunities. The plans for the new factory have also been approved by Karnataka State’s Industrial Ministry.
Tata Will Start Semiconductor Manufacturing in Karnataka
The new plant will be an Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging (ATMP) unit, which will be able to produce processors from raw silicon wafers.
Currently, there are zero ATMP facilities in India. The electronics production in our country is focused on the assembly of finished products, where the actual internal components are still being imported from overseas.
The new semiconductor plant by Tata will pave India’s way towards the production of silicon processors and other semiconductor parts. India is also set to inaugurate its first ATMP facility in Gujarat, which will be handled by the US-based semiconductor, Micron Technology.
These new facilities will fabricate processors from raw silicon wafers. It will also conduct testing of experimental chipsets and do research on new semiconductor technology. The ATMP facility in Gujarat is expected to be opened in 2024, while the Tata Group ATMP plant is expected to start operations in the next 3 to 4 years.
Tata Group Leading India’s Electronics Manufacturing Journey
Tata Electronics has been running a factory in Tamil Nadu to manufacture spare parts for smartphones. Recently, the company reported that Tata has manufactured parts worth Rs 493 crores so far in FY2023. Tata is also planning to expand this plant to increase the scale of production.
A few months back, Tata Group also started the acquisition of Apple’s Wistron facility in Karnataka. Hence, Tata will soon be the first Indian company in the world to manufacture iPhones, after the Wistron takeover.
Apple’s factory in Karnataka employs over 10,000 people and is spread over a land parcel of 300 acres. The facility also manufactures the latest iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, along with iPhone 14 models. Apple has also been planning to start the production of AirPods in India, but the contract is more likely to be handed over to Foxconn.
Tata has currently not registered for India’s Performance Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. It looks like the company will initially meet the threshold requirements of PLI, and later start gaining incentives of 4-6% for electronics manufacturing in the country.
Tata is also setting up a Rs 13,000 crore ($1.5 billion) battery manufacturing plant in Gujarat. The facility will mainly develop batteries for electric vehicles. Tata has also shown its interest in manufacturing lithium-ion batteries for mobile phones. Tata’s new battery plant will be situated in Gujarat and will have the capacity to produce 20 Gigawatt hours of batteries in the first phase.
