Microelectronics should be made a national agenda: TI chief

In a concentrated effort to boost the nascent Indian semiconductor industry, the thought leaders from this sector have urged that microelectronics should be made a national agenda.

Calling for this status, Texas Instruments India managing director Biswadip Mitra delivering his address at a seminar on 'India as a Global Hub for Semiconductors' as part of the ongoing Bangalore IT.Com 2004, said: "All the elements of a successful semiconductor industry is present in India. The only missing thing is the supporting environment. We should give this industry top priority and it should be among the top two areas of the Indian IT industry."

Mitra further noted that this industry should increase its dialogue with universities to increase the availability of talent for this highly specialised sector.

"The supporting infrastructure such as logistics should be drastically overhauled to be more efficient. This sector is now sailing without a tailwind and sooner the tide comes, we should be prepared with strong execution capabilities which will increase the credibility of this sector in India," he added.

Added Ramesh Emani, President, R&D Services, Wipro: "In a world that's increasingly IT driven, semiconductors are an all pervasive presence. India's journey into this arena commenced about six-seven years back. We have come a long way since the early days and there hardly is any semiconductor device worth its price, that doesn't have a contribution from India."

Despite this enviable track record and admirable progress, Emani said that this industry continues to remain a non-entity in terms of recognition.

"We need experience to excel in this industry and we have not been in this game for long enough and there is hardly any support from the academia in this," he noted.

Somshankar Das, president of e4e Inc, sharing his perspectives on this industry said: "Of late we seem to be obsessed with having a fabrication unit in India. When India is strong in semiconductor design, packaging and testing, we must focus more on these aspects and learn to leverage this to the hilt. Not only is a fab a multi-billion dollar affair, it demands highly scalable infrastructure and requires an ecosystem of supporting industries which we do not have in India. We should focus more on creating fabless companies from India and we should use the huge capacities across the globe who actually manufacture chips."