Semiconductors are attractive to economies because they will build a tremendous ecosystem, said Cher Whee Sim, VP of People Strategy, Technology & Talent Acquisition at Micron.

“When you bring manufacturing centre, assembly and test, like in our Gujarat facility, you will bring equipment vendors and materials vendors which will become a catalyst for the business. Simultaneously, job creation will also expand,” she said.

In 2023, Micron announced plans to build a new assembly and test facility in Gujarat to enable assembly and test manufacturing for both DRAM and NAND products and address demand from domestic and international markets. The combined investment for the facility is up to $2.75 billion.

“When we think about India, the journey goes back to 2019, when we decided the value propositions of highly skilled talent here which is a good reason to bring the global development centre. Today, the country has about 3500 people working,” said Cher, adding, “Our investment in Gujarat is aligned with the national agenda of semiconductors for manufacturing. We also have aspirations of what the size of the team will look like. We have strong foundations in our global development centre and hope to build on the size of the assembly and tests over the next few years.”

Skill gap and job demand mismatch

Earlier this year, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra announced that the facility, set to be operational by early 2025, is poised to generate 20,000 jobs. “If you look at the industries, fundamentally, when you need a magnitude of talent, it translates to business growth,” said Cher. 

Addressing the skill gaps in the country, Cher added that because of evolving technologies like AI, job demands are shifting quickly. “With new job roles being created, from an academic aspect, it might be difficult to catch up. When we started with Smart Manufacturing and AI, we needed a lot more data scientists and data engineers. The second dimension is a mismatch between what the schools teach and what the industry needs.”