The Hindu Business Line : SemIndia preparing to apply for Govt incentives

New Delhi, Oct. 10 On the heels of the Centre announcing detailed guidelines for semiconductor policy, SemIndia on Wednesday said it is preparing to apply for Government incentives to set up a chip-manufacturing facility in Hyderabad.

“We are preparing our application…we are working on it. But I cannot give a specific timeframe for submitting our application, as we need to talk to our investors and line-up the commitments,” Mr Vinod Agarwal, Chairman of SemIndia, said.

The company — which was the first to bet big on the Indian semiconductor manufacturing space in 2005 with plans to invest in an assembly-test-mark-pack (ATMP) unit, and a $3-billion fab unit to make chips — today said that the ATMP unit in Hyderabad would be ready by the middle of next year.

ATMP unit

“By the middle of next year, we expect the ATMP building to be ready. The ATMP plant would be operational by the end of 2008,” he said.

“For India to emerge as a semiconductor manufacturing destination, three factors – incentives, infrastructure and investor confidence need to come together. While the incentives are in place, we have to see how we proceed on the other two aspects,” Mr Agarwal pointed out.

The company also announced it has designed and delivered 5-lakh units of ADSL modems to UTStarcom for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, and is eyeing total revenue of Rs 100 crore in the current fiscal.

SemIndia — which is an Original Design Manufacturer — designed the product and software and also managed the integration and got it contract manufactured from Flextronics.