'We plan to double the pace of chip commercialization'

Applied Materials Inc. is looking to compress its research, development and trial cycles of production technologies in semiconductor equipment by halving it from the current 10-15 years, following its $400 million investment to set up a centre in Whitefield, Bengaluru, Prabhu Raja, president, semiconductor products group, and Srinivas Satya, country president, Applied Materials.

- Gulveen Aulakh

In an interview, the executives reiterated the US company’s commitment to India as it explores incentives under the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme and Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) instead of Semicon, as they align better with its objectives. Besides, it is also seeking to bring its global supplier network to establish India as the second largest base outside the US, and expand its existing partnerships. Applied Materials is also looking to grow its headcount in India by a third to 10,000. Edited excerpts:

In which areas will Applied Materials spend its $400 million investment in India?

Srinivas: Ours is an extremely R&D- intensive business. Globally, we spend $2.4 billion towards it, and a majority of it happens in India. So, we will continue to do it, as we need to expand our infrastructure to support R&D activities. So, a part of this investment will go toward R&D. We don’t have the numbers yet. We will also bring in more partners, because technology is getting more and more complex, and a single firm cannot do things like before. Our tool, it is made up of a combination of different critical technologies, such as robotics, vacuums, coatings, materials sciences and ceramics. So, a portion of our investment will go towards enabling collaborative R&D, such that if we bring in a supplier related to a certain technology, we will make sure we have the right hardware and infrastructure to do R&D for that particular sub-technology area fast. So, some of our capital investments will go towards that. Obviously, some part will also go for talent as we will need more talent in the region. We intend to be a part of talent development in the region.

Of the $400 million, how much is the government incentive?