Tata Group to establish chip production in India: Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran

Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran on Thursday said that India’s largest conglomerate would start producing semiconductors in India within the next few years. In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Chandrasekaran said the production of the chips would make India a key supplier on a global scale. 

Speaking about the issues and current shortage in the post-Covid period, Chandrasekaran said that the salt-to-auto-to-steel conglomerate will "look into the possibility of eventually launching an upstream chip fabrication platform." He added that the group has already set up Tata Electronics under which semiconductor assembly testing business will be set up, and hinted that its potential partners in the project would be from the US, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. 

"We have created Tata Electronics, under which we are going to set up semiconductor assembly testing business," Chandrasekaran told the Tokyo-based publication, referring to an electronic components manufacturer that the group founded in 2020. "We will have discussions with multiple players," he added, raising the possibility of partnerships with existing chip manufacturers. 

Earlier too, Chandrasekaran had shown his interest in the field of semiconductors. He said the total market size of high-tech manufacturing of electronics is about at $1 trillion, and the group is keen to explore the opportunities within the sector. 

In the latest interview, Tata Sons chairman said that the group has already planned to invest $90 billion over the next five years. 

Besides semiconductors, the company is also foraying into new-age businesses, like manufacture of EVs and EV batteries, production of renewable energy and development of "super apps" that allow users to buy goods and services from groceries to financial products, Chandrasekaran told Nikkei Asia.

India’s EV Boom 

A report by India Ratings and Research recently stated that India would need about 63,000 charging stations and cumulative investments of Rs 26,900 crore for setting them up over the next five years to cater to the growing demand for power for operating electric vehicles in the country.  

In the next decade, in line with the growth in EV sales, the country could need 0.23 million charging stations, entailing a total investment of Rs 1.05 lakh crore  by FY32, the report noted. As of now, there are about 1,000 commercial charging stations in the country in FY22, as per official data. 

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