India Needs Semiconductor IP Ownership: Entrepreneur

Mountain View (California), Dec 13 (PTI) As India takes major steps in the strategic field of semiconductors, it's important for it to develop a slew of companies that can own intellectual properties in this key area, a successful Indian-American entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley has said.

Applauding India for taking steps in the semiconductor industry that has emerged as a battleground for major global powers, Kush Gulati, co-founder, president, and CEO of Silicon Valley-headquartered Omni Design, said, “Electronics based on semiconductors are going to be absolutely mission-critical. It is the backbone, the very backbone of the future of technology and electronics.”

“Machine learning (ML) also is based on semiconductors. You have to build the hardware to support ML. Therefore you've got to have the company or country that controls these, an entity that is good at circuit design or chip design. Chip manufacturing is going to rule the world. It's kind of absolutely essential,” Gulati told PTI in a recent interview.

“Semiconductor manufacturing is one part, design is another part, and so is conceptualisation. India has done well with outsourced activities. A lot of designs are happening outside of India and a lot of implementations are happening within India,” he said.

Pointing out that those implementations are largely owned intellectual property wise, by many of these companies that are outside of India, Gulati said, “What India needs to do is develop a slew of companies or engender the development of such companies that can own the intellectual property.”

A lot of the best products that are being developed today in electronics are being developed in India, but India doesn't own it, he said, and added, “That's the gap. That's the transition that India needs to make.”

On the manufacturing side too, the fabs (fabrications where semiconductors are born) are located outside of India. “I think there is an opportunity today. If India can invest in those areas, that can engender the development of such complex packaged systems, I think, that would be an excellent place for India to start,” Gulati said.

Observing that the geopolitics of tomorrow is going to be shaped by what is being done in electronics today, Gulati said, “I think it's strategically essential in my view, to invest in manufacturing as well. Because wars are going to be fought with … using autonomous drones and machine learning will be powering a lot of that.