US-based Microchip to invest $300 mn in India, opens R&D center in Hyderabad

To strengthen its presence in India, the company has inaugurated a new research and development (R&D) facility at One Golden Mile Office Tower in Hyderabad. This 168,000-square-foot center, which has a capacity for 1,000 employees, joins Microchip’s existing developments in Bengaluru and Chennai, as well as sales offices across multiple cities, including Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, and New Delhi.

This strategic investment will not only enhance the engineering labs at Microchip’s Bengaluru and Chennai locations but also bolster the new Hyderabad R&D center. The company is focusing on catering to the technical and business support needs of an expanding customer base in India, according to a company statement.

Microchip added that the plans would boost significant hiring, as the firm looks to exploit India’s burgeoning talent pool. In addition, the company intends to sponsor technical consortia, support educational institutions and programs, and initiate a range of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs tailored to meet regional needs.

The company has approximately 2,500 employees in India, working in semiconductor design and development, sales and support, IT infrastructure and application engineering operations, supporting the company’s 2,000 customers in the region in the industrial, automotive, data center, aerospace, defence, communications and consumer industries.

“Microchip is making a significant strategic commitment to growing our operations in India, whose meteoric growth has established it as one of the top sources of business and technical resources in our sector,” said Ganesh Moorthy, President and CEO of Microchip. “Our investments here will enable us to both benefit from and contribute to the country’s increasingly important role in the global semiconductor industry,” he added.

The India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) and Counterpoint Research recently reported that India’s semiconductor market is expected to reach $64 billion USD by 2026, which is nearly triple its 2019 size of $22.7 billion USD.

India welcomed a flurry of deals within its semiconductor industry during PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the U.S last month. American chipmaker Micron Technology said that it would invest up to $825 million in a new chip assembly and test facility in Gujarat, India, its first factory in the country that will create up to 5,000 new direct jobs in the region. The company said that the total investment in the facility will be $2.75 billion and of that 50% will come from the Indian central government and 20% from the state of Gujarat.

Further, Applied Materials announced its plans to invest $400 million over the next four years in a new engineering center in India, which is expected to be located near the company’s existing facility in Bengaluru and is likely to support more than $2 billion of planned investments and create 500 new advanced engineering jobs, the company said.

Semiconductor manufacturing equipment supplier, Lam Research also said last month it plans to train 60,000 engineers in India in the next 10 years to boost India’s semiconductor education and workforce development. During PM Modi’s state visit to the US, the company said that the training on nanotechnologies will be facilitated by Lam Research’s virtual nanofabrication environment platform, Semiverse Solutions.

Updated: 04 Jul 2023, 10:57 AM IST