NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a semiconductor manufacturing facility to be built by Indian tech major HCL and Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM).
IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who announced the cabinet decision on Wednesday, said the facility will be located near Jewar airport, an “up and coming area” within the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) region.
This is the sixth semiconductor unit being planned in the country under ISM and will begin commercial production in 2027. It will serve as an Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility for display driver integrated circuits (ICs).
This is Foxconn’s second attempt to set up a semiconductor unit under the ISM. In 2023, the Taiwan-based company teamed up with Vedanta, but the partnership ultimately fell through.
“HCL has a very long history of manufacturing electronics and computers,” the minister said, adding that the new unit will use wafer-level packaging technology, specifically tailored for assembling display driver chips.
“Once the display driver ICs get properly assembled here, then the display panel plant will also come to India,” Vaishnaw said.
The facility is expected to cost ₹3,706. It wasn’t disclosed how this investment will be split between HCL and Foxconn.
The two companies could not be reached for comments.
The facility will assemble display driver chips, which are a small but important part in electronic devices that control how images, videos, and graphics appear on a screen. They are used in devices such as phones, laptops, and computers.
“The plant is designed for 20,000 wafers per month. The design output capacity is 36 million units per month,” a government statement said.
The minister said the Foxconn-HCL facility was expected to cater to 40% of India’s domestic demand for display driver chips, and support Foxconn’s global supply chain needs.
Over the past decade, the country’s electronics manufacturing output has grown five-fold, according to government data. With the addition of this unit under the ISM, the government moves a step closer to its goal of increasing value addition in electronics from the current 20% to over 35% by 2030, a target the minister has repeated on multiple occasions.
He did not indicate when the next phase of the mission, dubbed ‘ISM 2.0’ would be launched, insisting that the government’s focus was on proper execution of current projects.
ISM was launched in 2021 with a total outlay of ₹76,000 crore.
The six semiconductor units under ISM are entitled for central and state government subsidies for development of semiconductors and display manufacturing ecosystem in India.
The other five units under ISM include three in Gujarat’s Sanand: Micron’s ATMP (Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging) Unit, CG Power-Renesas’ ATMP Unit and Kaynes Semicon’s OSAT unit. The other two are Tata-PSMC Fab unit in Gujarat’s Dholera, which is the only fabrication plant in India, and Tata ATMP Unit in Assam’s Morigaon.
