The union cabinet, on May 17, approved the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme 2.0 for IT Hardware with a budgetary outlay Rs 17,000 crore. On this Chowdhry said, “It is better than the earlier one.”
However, he pointed out, “I would like to see a little more in PLI schemes. My belief is that we should not just be a ‘screwdriver’ country. We should be a value addition country. Therefore, the PLIs that come out of the government should encourage value addition in India. In this PLI, they’ve added a little piece where they’ve said you’ll get 2% extra if you buy components locally, which is good. But I would have liked them to go one step beyond and say ‘if you design in India, you’ll get 4%,” he said. “Now, that will create an industry,” he added.
“Just manufacturing gives you 4% to 6% value addition. If you start buying components in India, it’ll improve. But if you actually design in India, your value addition will be phenomenal,” he said.
ET on May 16 had reported that the government is set to approve the chip-making plan of the Vedanta-Foxconn joint venture under the $10-billion Indian Semiconductor Mission (ISM).
Chowdhry hailed the news and said it hasn’t taken long for the proposal to be approved. “In the life of semiconductors, one-and-a-half years to two years is nothing. It takes time,” he said.
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He said the reason for this is that India has never set up a semiconductor manufacturing plant.On India’s plan to set up semiconductor manufacturing, Chowdhry, who is a member of the advisory committee to the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), said, “This is the first time we’re attempting this. The second reason is that you need a terrific combination of technology, finance, leadership and destiny. India is giving the highest incentive anywhere in the world. We’re giving 50% of the capital expenditure, and states are giving another 20%. So, 70% of what you need to invest is already paid for. Now that’s a huge risk for the government. So, they’re not going to approve without going into every line of the business plan,” he said.
He added that the business plan is important because it is the taxpayer’s money. “70% of the money is the country’s money. They cannot afford to approve an application that will not deliver results. Break even in semiconductors could take anywhere between 15 years to 20 years. We need to know how customers will be acquired,” he said. “The technology has to be proven and not something that they will have to come here and develop now. It has to be for 29 nanometre and above,” he added.
Since semiconductors is a ‘big company game’, as long as the company is into silicon, large corporations like Reliance, Tata, Vedanta, and Adani, are well placed to get into semiconductors, Chowdhry said. “I think those are the ones who should come forward and invest. In compound semiconductors where the investments are much smaller, you don’t need big companies alone. We need a good mix of silicon and compound semiconductors,” he said.
