Chipmaker NXP to invest $1 billion in India to boost research & development

He said the company is in talks with the automotive sector and other industries in the country, where it has four semiconductor design centres, with about 3,000 employees.

NXP follows in the footsteps of major chipmaking companies, who, even though have shied away from investing in the manufacturing ecosystem in India, have opened research and design centres in the country. This includes companies like AMD, which last year opened its largest global design centre in Bengaluru and Qualcomm, which opened a facility in Chennai.

India is home to a large number of chip design engineers, as it has served as a backoffice for global chip companies for several years now. There are an estimated 3 lakh design engineers in the country, accounting for around 20 per cent of the global workforce in the sector.

These centres outline the growing importance of India in the chip economy and value chain, as companies around the world look to diversify from places like China and Taiwan.

India has ambitions to become a major chip hub on the lines of the United States, Taiwan and South Korea, and has been courting foreign companies to set up operations in the country.

So far, it has approved five chip units, four of which are in Gujarat and one in Assam. This includes a fabrication plant being set up by the Tata Group and Taiwan’s Powerchip, and four assembly and testing plants by US-based Micron Technology, the Tatas, Murugappa Group’s CG Power in partnership with Japan’s Renesas, and Kaynes Semicon.