Kaynes SemiCon, a 100% subsidiary of Kaynes Technology, is investing INR 2,850 crore in a facility in Hyderabad for outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing (OSAT), with automatic test equipment (ATE) and a reliability testing line, chief executive Raghu Panicker said.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the facility that will have 13 lines for OSAT, and one each for ATE and reliability testing was held recently.
Kaynes SemiCon will also invest INR 83.28 crore in a research and development facility for silicon photonics for co-packaged optics in Mysuru. Parent Kaynes Technology is also making an investment of INR 750 crore in Mysuru for a bare board printed circuit board plant.
Mysuru-based Kaynes Technology has a workforce of 3,500 people, Panicker said. Based on its closing stock price of INR 2,479.80, up 1.1%, on the BSE Wednesday, the company that made an initial public offering last year had a market value of INR 14,418 crore.
Kaynes is a 38-year-old electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company with manufacturing infrastructure in Mysuru, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Manesar and Parwanoo with service centres in Mumbai and Kochi.
“We are setting up an additional capacity for EMS infrastructure spread over 17 acres of land in Mysuru apart from a bare board PCB plant,” Panicker told ET.
In terms of approvals from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for its OSAT facility in Hyderabad and the R&D centre in Mysuru, Panicker said the company is a couple of months away.
“We submitted the detailed project report in mid-October and technology partner agreements with Malaysia, Taiwan and the US. Before Christmas, we are expecting approvals to come through,” he said.
For both projects, the respective state governments have given their approvals. Telangana has given a 25% subsidy for the OSAT project, and an additional 50% subsidy will be given by the central government when the approval comes through under the India Semiconductor Mission $10 billion incentive scheme, he said.
“We may eventually set up a volume production line for silicon photonics in Mysuru too. There are other governments also talking to us like Odisha, Noida, and Gujarat,” he said.
Lack of trained workforce
In the last four months, Kaynes SemiCon has set up a certification course with Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai and Birla Institute of Technology Pilani to get trained workforce for its projects.
“We are also setting up a programme with IIT-Hyderabad and the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association. We have been to diploma colleges, Nettur Technical Training Foundation and Industrial Training Institutes and picking students who will be sponsored for BTech and MTech in packaging and VLSI (very large-scale integration) in these institutes and then hire them,” he said.
Kaynes chairperson Savitha Ramesh said R&D has been the cornerstone of the company’s success so far. “Hence the R&D line for OSAT in co-packaged optics space and a system for networking domain will be a true silicon-to-system from Kaynes SemiCon,” she said.
“We will bring experienced OSAT leaders from southeast Asia and Taiwan, and create an ecosystem of trained engineers, operators and technicians for India,” said Ramesh Kannan, managing director of Kaynes Technology.
