Vedanta, led by Anil Agarwal, on Monday appointed industry veteran David Reed to head its semiconductor unit in which the company plans to invest $20 billion (nearly Rs. 1,65,600) to make chips essential for mobile phones, laptops and TVs are.
In an interview with PTI, Agarwal said the group intends to start manufacturing semiconductors at Dholera in Gujarat in two to three years.
“We will start with an investment of US$5 billion (nearly Rs. 41,400) and expand it over the years,” he said.
The semiconductor is made in joint venture with Taiwanese electronics Pursue Foxconn. Vedanta holds a 63 percent stake, the rest is in the joint venture with Foxconn.
The company plans to initially produce 40,000 wafers per month.
Prior to joining Vedanta, Reed was with NXP Semiconductors where he was executive vice president and general manager of global operations.
He joined NXP as part of its merger with Freescale Semiconductor, where he served as senior vice president of manufacturing operations. Previously, David was vice president and general manager at GlobalFoundries.
He began his career in 1984 at Texas Instruments, where he held various management positions around the world for 26 years.
In September 2022, Vedanta signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gujarat government to establish India’s first semiconductor fab unit, a display fab unit and a semiconductor assembly and test unit in the state.
Vedanta Group has previously announced that the group has earmarked investments of up to US$20 billion for the semiconductor business and plans to invest US$15 billion (nearly Rs.1,24,200) in the first 10 years.
Vedanta will look at manufacturing a 28 nanometer (nm) chipset.
It has also applied for the establishment of a display manufacturing factory to manufacture screens used for displays in electronic devices.
