NEW DELHI: A joint venture of Vedanta Foxconn Semiconductors Ltd is planning to apply for a 40-nanometer fabrication (fab) unit in the country, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, said on Friday.
The minister, speaking on the sidelines of a press briefing following a presentation on India’s progress in digitisation over the past nine years, added that the government will evaluate their application whenever it is submitted. Billionaire Anil Agarwal-led joint venture Vedanta-Foxconn has applied for a 28-nanometer semiconductor fabrication (fab) under the PLI scheme. However, the government is yet to consider their application.
“They have applied for a 28-nanometre fab, and I understand that they are also planning to apply for a 40-nanometre fab. Once that application is submitted, it will be processed accordingly,” said the minister,” said the minister.
To establish India as a semiconductor hub, the government announced the Rs 76,000 crore PLI scheme in December 2021. The first window for 28-nanometer fabrication plants remained open for 45 days in January 2022. It received four applications, including one from Vedanta-Foxconn.
The government is evaluating them. Subsequently, starting from June 1, 2023, the government reopened the application process for the scheme to attract major players in the industry. “We are becoming a semiconductor nation, which is not a small task. It is a complex area. But in many areas of semiconductors, we are making rapid progress,” said the minister.
He said the entire GPS system will be powered by an Indian-designed Navic chip, developed in partnership with the government and private sector start-ups. “In packaging, there will soon be some proposals that are critical to the technology space,” he added. On Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing jobs, he said AI is disruptive but it can’t replace jobs as it is not that sophisticated at this stage.
IT Min asks Kerala reason for Chinese cable import
NEW DELHI: Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday asked Kerala government the “reason or pressure” for using the Chinese-origin optical fibre in Kerala Fibre Optic Network (KFON) project. The minister, addressing a press briefing after a presentation on how far India has travelled in terms of digitisation in the last nine years, said India has many optical fibre plants but wondered why Kerala needed to import from China. “They didn’t require importing from China, and this (optical fibre) is a domestically available product. Why did they need to import from China. What was the pressure? What was the reason?” he said. ENS