TN and Kerala woo semiconductor companies for investment

DQW NEWS BUREAU Bangalore, Jan 17

There was enough evidence of the war for investment between

various Indian states from the fast growing semiconductors sector. In a panel

discussion held at Bangalore as part of the just concluded 20th International

conference on VLSI design and embedded systems, senior officials from the state

governments of West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu made pitches to the industry

and senior executives assembled at the venue. The session which was sponsored by

Webel had Dr Debesh Das , Minister-in-charge, IT, Government of West Bengal as

its Chief Guest and the panel was moderated by Rajendra Khare, Chairman, ISA. Dr

Pradeep Dutta of Synopsys was the speaker from the industry.

In his inaugural remarks during interactions, Dr Das said,

"West Bengal is among the most attractive destinations for investment for

the semiconductor sector."

In his presentation, C Umashankar, MD, ELCOT highlighted Chennai's

emergence as the manufacturing hub and more specifically in the electronic

manufacturing arena and the fact that Chennai has been found to be 11 percent

more cost-effective to do business than Shenzen in China. He said that Chennai

is the talent source for the knowledge industry and that employability of its

graduates is among the highest at the rate of 40-50 percent. The state

government is imparting training in soft skills to improve this percentage

further.

J Parthasarathy, Director, STPI-Bangalore said, "We are

focusing on the incubation initiative which is fetching results already. One of

the five companies that are being incubated in the center has just received $2

million in funding. We are also talking to Singapore and Israel universities for

support and collaboration."

During his presentation, K R Jyothilal, Special Secretary,

Government of Kerala, said, "The state would become the first in India by

announcing a separate policy for the semiconductor sector shortly which points

to the fact that we are focused on attracting investment in design and

development and not much on manufacturing. The state is also sending its faculty

to IIT-Powai for training to permeate better quality teaching and would shortly

be setting-up two self-contained cities in the state.

Das informed, "With the Indian design center coming up in

Salt Lake city, its' position has been further reinforced and the state

government is taking


necessary initiatives to ensure that the momentum is not lost and companies

looking at West Bengal are supported and encouraged." He also listed some

of the government initiatives to make it conducive for semiconductor companies to

set-up in the state.

VLSI-2007, the 20th edition is the joint-conference forum for

researchers and designers to present and discuss various aspects of VLSI design,

electronic


design automation (EDA), enabling technologies, and embedded systems. The

conference has a status of IEEE conference with innovation, education and


research as the focus. Previous conferences were held in Kolkatta, Hyderabad,

Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, among other places.