India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to lift the country to the world's third-largest economy in his third term in office. One way he aims to do that is through heavy investment in technology, particularly semiconductors. TaiwanPlus visits the site where India’s first chip fab will be built.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Wake up to your dreams. A promotional video extols the untapped potential of a dynamic
00:16new high-tech city, the future of India.
00:21This is what the local government of Dholera envisions, ambitious plans for a 920 square
00:27kilometre piece of land in the middle of the western state of Gujarat. This area is
00:32vast, arid and home to few people, but it's set to house the country's first semiconductor
00:39manufacturing plant, or chip fab.
00:41They will start the construction very soon, maybe in the next three months they will start
00:49the actual construction and the fab will be ready for commissioning in 2026.
00:58The Dholera plant, which will cost around 11 billion US dollars to build, is a collaboration
01:04between India's Tata conglomerate and Taiwan's power chip semiconductor manufacturing company,
01:10or PSMC.
01:12The local government here is eager to show us how this chip manufacturing hub is developing,
01:18and with reason, because once this whole place is completed, it will be the key to
01:23India achieving its ambitious goal of becoming a high-tech economic powerhouse.
01:32That's as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recently elected to a third term in office, plans to
01:38push India two spots to become the world's third largest economy.
01:42India will be the world's green energy hub, pharma hub, electronics hub, automobile hub,
02:00semiconductor hub.
02:03He aims to harness manufacturing and high-tech industry, like semiconductors, to reach that
02:09The Tata PSMC plant would produce 22 nanometer chips, which function as the brains of modern
02:15electronics.
02:17The local Gujarat government hopes that the new plant will attract other tech companies
02:21to set up shop here.
02:23But they have to assure investors that there's enough reliable power for the energy-intensive
02:28chip-making industry.
02:37Taiwanese chip giant TSMC has faced challenges in its ventures abroad, most notably when
02:42setting up in the US, in the desert state of Arizona, since making semiconductors requires
02:48massive amounts of water.
02:50This experience raises questions about whether chip fabs in similarly dried Dholera will
02:55consume more than they produce.
02:58We have already built in almost all the consideration for the environment, for the ecology, and
03:06the region is a little swamp, we have taken care of that also.
03:11This part we have already built in in our overall planning for Semicon City.
03:16The local government has high hopes that once completed, the new hub will snowball, attracting
03:21more foreign investment, and become India's city of the future.
03:25For now, the Dholera Semicon vision remains just that, until this patch of dry land blooms
03:32and a new centre of tech for the country is born.
03:36John Su, Suvam Pal and Sally Ensign, in Gujarat, India, for Taiwan Plus.