After a successful journey in the automotive industry, India and Japan on Thursday signed a memorandum of cooperation (MoC) on semiconductor supply-chain partnership for government-to-government and industry-to-industry collaboration.
“Everybody wants a resilient semiconductor supply chain and in this, India and Japan are important partners and this is in furtherance with our Prime Minister’s visit to the US where various agreements were signed, and that is reflecting in cooperation with others today,” Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Communications and Information and Technology told reporters here.
He said this partnership will lead to semiconductor design, semiconductor manufacturing, equipment research, talent development and overall how to bring resilience in the supply chain.
He said both the countries will create an implementation organisation that will work on opportunities for government-to-government and industry-to-industry collaborations.
“Rapidus Corporation will be one of the biggest element as part of this cooperation...we will move rapidly in that direction, and both India and Japan will review all the developments at the ministerial level,” Vaishnaw added.
Rapidus Corporation is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan which was established in August 2022 and is conglomerate of various Japanese companies put together including Denso, Kioxia, MUFG Bank, NEC, NTT, SoftBank, Sony and Toyota.
The development comes after reports of homegrown tech company HCL Group entering into semiconductor manufacturing space.
India is poised to play a crucial role in the semiconductor industry and in order to do that it is inviting global companies to manufacture in India, with attractive schemes.
Recently, during the Prime Minister’s visit to the US also, major semiconductor company Micron has committed for a semiconductor assembly and test plant in Gujarat with a total investment of $2.75 billion (around ₹22,540 crore), which will also create up to 5,000 new direct jobs and 15,000 community jobs in future.
Applied Materials has also announced last month its intention to build a collaborative engineering center in Bengaluru, for development and commercialisation of technologies for semiconductor manufacturing equipment with a gross investment of $400 million over four years.