A fab debate on display

The acronyms are bewildering. There's the humble LCD (liquid crystal display), but also OLED (organic light-emitting diode), and then the emerging micro-OLED. Together, they form the nub of a debate on what kind of maiden display fab (fabrication) units India should set up in its quest for self-reliance in a key sector

- SURAJEET DAS GUPTA

The next time you upgrade your mobile phone or television set, you'd do well to remember that its display unit wouldn't have been fabricated in India.

This matters because it is a huge missing piece in the government's ₹75,000 crore semiconductor incentive scheme. While the scheme has cleared complex projects straddling silicon and compound fabrication plants for wafers, as well as units that package, test and turn the wafers into chips, there is one key area it has failed to deliver on — a promise to set up two display fabrication units (where none exists today).

To be fair, there have been some attempts — like a $3-4 billion proposal from Vedanta and a $3 billion offer from Rajesh Exports — to build display fab plants, but these await clearance. Meanwhile, nearly all the funds earmarked under the incentive scheme have already been committed, to mostly fab and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) plants.

But there’s some good news: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary S Krishnan told the Semicon India conference a few weeks ago that display fabs will be prioritised in the government's upcoming semicon 2.0 incentive scheme, which is expected to be cleared by October this year. The Semicon conferences are part of the Centre's India Semiconductor Mission to put the country on the global semicon map.