Group, company headed by brothers get Union Cabinet's nod for semiconductor fab units

Venkatachari Jagannathan

Chennai, Feb 29 (IANS) A common thread that runs in all three companies that got the Union Cabinet's nod on Thursday for setting up semiconductor units is that they are headed by brothers – N. Chandrasekaran and N. Srinivasan.

While Chandrasekaran is the Chairman of Tata Sons, the principal investment holding company and promoter of Tata companies, Srinivasan heads the CG Power and Industrial Solutions Ltd, which is part of another industrial conglomerate, the Murugappa Group.

Incidentally, their brother N. Ganapathy Subramaniam is the Chief Operating Officer at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He is also an Additional Director and Chairman of Tata Elxsi Ltd and an Additional Director (Non-Independent; Non-Executive) of Tata Communications Ltd.

According to the government, Tata Electronics Private Ltd will set up a semiconductor fab in partnership with Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (PSMC), Taiwan in Dholera, Gujarat at an investment of Rs 91,000 crore.

The proposed plant will have a capacity to make 50,000 wafer starts per month. The high performance compute chips with 28 nm technology will find use in electric vehicles (EV), telecom, defence, automotive, consumer electronics, display, power electronics and others.

Another Tata group company, Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test Pvt Ltd will set up a semiconductor unit in Morigaon, Assam at an outlay of Rs.27,000 crore. The plant will have a capacity of 48 million chips per day catering to automotive, electric vehicles, consumer electronics, telecom, mobile phones and others.

According to the government, TSAT semiconductor is developing indigenous advanced semiconductor packaging technologies including flip chip and ISIP (integrated system in package) technologies.

On the other hand, the Murugappa group’s CG Power got the Union Cabinet’s nod for setting up a semiconductor unit for specialised chips at an outlay of Rs 7,600 crore.

CG Power, in partnership with Renesas Electronics Corporation, Japan and Stars Microelectronics, Thailand will set up a semiconductor unit in Sanand, Gujarat. Renesas is a leading semiconductor company focussed on specialised chips. It operates 12 semiconductor facilities and is an important player in microcontrollers, analog, power, and System on Chip (‘SoC)’ products.

The CG Power’s semiconductor unit will have a capacity to make 15 million chips per day for consumer, industrial, automotive and power applications.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at [email protected])