India will emerge into leading position
in semiconductor market
Everybody in the semiconductor industry talking that,
India has talent pool. India is growing mainly due to its
talent. The key speakers at ongoing (Jan 5-8 2009) VLSI
conference at Delhi, also concluding that, India has the
key enablers to play leading role in semiconductor market.
People have selected and studied electronics engineering,
so they have the task to excel in this field, Engineers
who are not able grasp the silicon quite well have moved
over to application software areas. But the engineers who
are bitten by the power of semiconductor have put all the
effort to grow their career in VLSI. Few are branched out
to embedded, which is little easier to learn and provide
more job opportunities but the focused rest are into the
tough VLSI zone.
These engineers who have preferred VLSI have grown in their
career by taking jobs offered by Multi National Companies
(MNCs) like Freescale, Intel, NXP
.. In fact there
are no more than couple of pure Indian VLSI companies. However
there are quite a lot of less risk taking outsourcing companies
in India who sell VLSI design services more than a product.
Indian VLSI engineers have developed complete products
out of their Indian Labs of MNC companies they are working
for. The same engineers can develop completely made in India
chips.
What has to be done by the Indian industry to achieve this
goal are,
Cash rich Indian companies (Wipro, Infosys, Reliance, Tata
) should invest into this area. Semiconductor needs
huge investment. The risk is so high in semiconductor industry
timid investors are strictly prohibited.
VLSI design gurus should turn into brave entrepreneurs
in this challenging VLSI field. The genius engineers working
for others should sacrifice high paid jobs and the MNC comforts
for entrepreneurial cause.
Indian mainstream media thinks technology means Infosys
and Wipro. These companies are called tech companies not
due to their electronics engineering capabilities but for
their business application software packages and services.
Atleast Wipro has major stake in electronics engineering
but many newborn fast growing Indian tech companies are
least interested in this domain. The reason is, the risks
are higher and returns are no way comparable to business
software outsourcing. So media has to focus equally on engineering
part of IT along with services.
India definitely needs a latest sub nano meter (nm) semiconductor
fab on urgent basis. Once we have a fab, which makes chips
exclusively for local market, it adds strategic strength
to the industry.
Government has to realize the long-term benefits of thriving
semiconductor industry and provide the necessary infrastructure.
The public sector companies such as ISRO, BEL, and BHEL
would join hands with private and academia to find out the
ways to boost the growth of semiconductor industry.
Semiconductor manufactoring requires experts from mechanical,
chemical, optical and such core engineering branches to
design, maintain and operate IC fabrications equipments.
There need to be synergy between multi-disciplines of engineering.
In India, we need to improve a lot in establishing relationship
between different branches of engineering.
Finally what drives is growing domestic market. This alone
will trigger every other thing for growth. So it's for Indian
engineers and businesses to get involved in shaping the
Indian semiconductor industry rather than handing over to
offshore companies.