NEW DELHI: A day after it withdrew from a $19.5 billion semiconductor joint venture with mining baron Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd, Foxconn said it plans to apply for incentives that India is offering under its semiconductor manufacturing policy.
“Foxconn is committed to India and sees the country successfully establishing a robust semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem.Foxconn is working toward submitting an application,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
In its pursuit of diversification and expansion into the electric vehicle market, Foxconn, a prominent supplier to Apple, has been striving to enter the chip manufacturing sector for quite sometime.
Foxconn is in active talks with several local and international partners to build up semiconductor production in India using mature chip manufacturing technology for products including electric vehicles, Reuters reported quoting a source.
“The company will continue to be there, just that it will find other partners,” the person said.Taiwan, primarily through the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and South Korea, with Samsung, are the dominant players in the global semiconductor manufacturing industry, responsible for producing the majority of the world’s top chips.
In an effort to enter the semiconductor race, India approved a $10 billion incentive scheme in late 2021. The scheme aims to kickstart India’s domestic semiconductor industry by providing coverage for up to 50% of project costs, thus encouraging the development of a robust semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem within the country.
Foxconn, best known for assembling iPhones and other Apple products, and Vedanta had last year signed a pact to set up semiconductor and display production plants in Gujarat.
According to Foxconn, the decision to withdraw from the semiconductor joint venture with Vedanta was based on mutual recognition that the project was not progressing at the desired pace, and there were challenging obstacles that could not be smoothly overcome. However, Foxconn emphasized that this development should not be seen as negative.
While the Vedanta group maintained that it remains “fully committed” to the project and claimed to have “lined up” new partners, Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Rajeev Chandrasekhar maintained that the break-up will not impact India’s semiconductor efforts or the individual business plans of the two companies.
Meanwhile, shares of Vedanta fell over 2% on Tuesday, a day after Taiwan’s Foxconn said it withdrew from a $19.5 billion semiconductor joint venture with the metals-to-oil conglomerate.
(With inputs from agencies)
