Singapore to help India chase the fab dream

BAGALORE, INDIA: Singapore, a leading manufacturer of electronics products and semiconductors will help India harness its electronics manufacturing capacity and develop trade and technical cooperation links between the electronics and semiconductor industry of the two countries.

Singapore nurtures an end-to-end ESDM ecosystem with approximately 40 IC design companies, 14 silicon wafer fabs and 20 assembly and test units.

On the other hand, India has a huge domestic ESDM market, but lacks adequate manufacturing capacity. The demand-supply gap is expected to widen further upto $300 billion by 2020 as the ESDM Industry size is expected to reach $400 billion with local production and services is merely estimated to be around $100 billion only.

To address this, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association (SSIA) at the IESA Vision Summit. This expands the scope of trade and investment opportunities for the member companies of both associations.

The Singapore government has introduced programs including incentives for locally conducted R&D along with infrastructure and human resource development programs for high-end manufacturing. Such developments in either economies make both markets conducive and attractive for investments.

While it opens opportunities for Singapore EDSM companies to move up the value chain by shifting some manpower intensive operations to proximal locations like India offering and competitive costs; Indian firms are also get benefited through setting up their operations in Singapore, providing them a better understanding of the trends and demands in the South East Asian markets.

Ashok Chandak, Chairman, IESA and Sr. Director NXP Semiconductors said, “Both Singapore and Indian markets are considered highly important markets in the global EDSM sector. There are emerging opportunities for Singapore companies to support and speed up the semiconductor fabs setup in India and also the electronics products creations as the demand continues to grow manifold in India."

In Singapore, the manufacturing sector is witnessing growth in the value chain of higher margin activities such as research, development, and services. There has been a significant investment increase by semiconductor firms in Singapore with the intention to expand R&D and supply chain operations.

Meenu Sarin, Honorary Asst. Secretary, SSIA said, “Through this partnership, we aim to establish contacts between organizations and encourage reciprocal visits of official business persons and technical specialists between the two countries. Our endeavor will be to maintain a continuing exchange of information, investment promotion and harnessing a healthy environment for research and development as well as business opportunities between the two countries.”

Some recommendations for collaboration areas in ESDM sector between IESA & SSIA are:

Business to business opportunities:

• Opportunity for Singapore companies to create support ecosystem for setting up fabrication units in India
• Investment in ATMP units in India
• Opportunity for Indian companies to help Singapore scale up design talent
• Singapore companies to invest in electronic component ecosystem of India
• Indian companies to set up operations in Singapore to explore emerging South East Asian markets
• Singapore companies to explore India as a competitive location for Hitech competencies.

Government to government opportunities:

• Joint fund for R&D
• Partnership between Sector Skill Council for standardization in skill development
• Collaboration for implementing standards in area of electronics design, manufacturing