Deadline for applications for establishing FAB facility extended till 25 November

The department of electronics and information technology (DeiTY) has extended the last date for submitting expression of interest (EoI) by semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB) manufacturers for establishing manufacturing facilities in India to 25 November 2013.

The earlier deadline was to expire on 6 November.

The government had recently approved National Policy on Electronics (NPE), with the objective of achieving a turnover of about $400 billion by 2020, involving investment of about $100 billion and employment of around 28 million by 2020.

This inter alia, includes achieving a turnover of $55 billion of chip design and embedded software industry and $80 billion of exports in the sector.

The policy also proposes setting up of over 200 electronic manufacturing clusters and significantly upscaling high-end human resource creation to 2500 PhDs annually by 2020 in the sector.

Under the scheme for electronics manufacturing cluster, the government provides 50 per cent of the cost of upgrading infrastructure and logistics as grant-in-aid.

In order to attract the maximum number of FAB manufacturers from all over the globe, the government had recently decided to apprise all such manufacturers of the quantum of subsidy and other benefits and support being offered for establishing FAB manufacturing facilities in India.

Last month, the government had accorded 'in principle' approval for establishing two FAB manufacturing facilities in the country and issued letters of 'in principle' approval to two bidders.

India has become the hub for semiconductor design with nearly 2000 chips being designed per year and more than 20, 000 engineers working in various aspects of chip design and verification.

Annually India generates nearly $2 billion in revenues for the chip design services. This provides an enabling environment for the semiconductor wafer FAB, which will come up in India.

Demand for electronic products in the country has seen phenomenal growth over the last couple of decades, fuelled by rising GDP. Going by current estimates, the demand for electronics hardware in the country is projected to increase from $45 billion in 2009 to $400 billion by 2020.

The estimated production is expected to reach $104 billion by the year 2020, creating a gap of $296 billion in demand and production.

This creates a unique opportunity for companies in the Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) sector to look at India as their next destination to cater to the domestic demand as well as act as an exports hub, according to a task force appointed by DeiTY.