Tata will get 70% subsidy for Gujurat fab, says PSMC chair

Business news | March 5, 2024

By Peter Clarke

India Analog Materials & processes wafer fab

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Steel-to-automobile conglomerate Tata will be provided with 70 percent of the funds to build India’s first 300mm wafer fab in Dholera, Gujurat, according to Taiwan’s TechNews quoting Frank Huang, chairman of PSMC.

The subsidy is expected to come from both the Indian central government and the state of Gujurat.

Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (PSMC) has confirmed it will partner with Tata Electronics to build the wafer fab. However, Huang said in an interview that PSMC will provide manufacturing process technology rather than investment.

Estimates of the financial budget for the fab have been put at US$11 billion (see Tata, Powerchip win OK for US$11 billion Indian wafer fab). This is a large amount for a factory that is expected to be behind the leading-edge of IC manufacturing technology. However, it has been reported that it will be a high-volume facility when fully equipped. The fab has planned capacity of 50,000 wafer starts per month.

The ground-breaking for the project could take place as soon as next week (March 12) with senior politicians in attendence.

PSMC said in a statement that Tata Electronics plans to produce power management ICs, display driver ICs as well as microcontrollers and high-performance computing logic to support the automotive, computing and data storage, wireless communications, artificial intelligence and other application end markets.

Reportedly the plan was put together in response to a specific request from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. Other Taiwanese chip companies had been asked to form joint ventures with Indian companies but had declined (see India asks Taiwan to include wafer fab in trade deal).