Date:30/08/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/08/30/stories/2006083004020400.htm

Back Taiwan Chi Cheng on fact-finding trip to India

Our Bureau

Keen to set up R&D centres

Those interested in circuit design seem to view India favourably compared to China.

Chennai , Aug. 29

The Taiwan Chi Cheng Enterprise Co Ltd is on a fact-finding trip to India towards setting up a manufacturing base here.

The $135-m company manufactures metal casings and mechanical components that go into mobile phones, PDAs and MP3 devices.

Mr Jones Chou, Associate Manager of Finance, told Business Line that, "We have not made any decision yet. Our customer Motorola is locating a plant here. They have invited us to explore possibilities. We need to evaluate the benefit of manufacturing in India compared to shipping components from existing facilities."

Outside Taiwan, the company has manufacturing facilities in China and Malaysia, in addition to joint venture companies that have plants in Germany and Japan.

Asked to comment on their most recent investment experience, Mr Chou said, "We have a plant in Malaysia. It now has 500 people and the investment that went in was about $5 million." He declined comment on the size of the investment in India.

Mr Chou was not the only one from the delegation, headed by the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association, interested in India. Others such as Powerchip Semiconductor, Nanya Technologies, both chip-makers; Winbond Electronics, which is into integrated circuits; STAr Technologies, a semiconductor test and measurement solution vendor, are all interested in India's talent pool in the software development arena.

Circuit design

Mr Eric Tang, Vice-President, Powerchip Semiconductor, said, "Our own human resources in engineering are limited. We need to expand our design competence."

Echoing his sentiment, Mr Paul Chiang, Vice-President, Nanya Technology, said, "We are impressed with what we hear about circuit design capabilities in India. We are visiting to see what we can work out here."

Asked if they were interested in setting up centres here or actually exporting Indian manpower itself to Taiwan, Mr Tang said, "We are looking at all options. But if we think it is possible and manageable for us, we would be looking at setting up Research and Development centres in India."

Powerchip has about 6,000 employees, of whom, several hundreds would be engineers devoted to circuit design in their centres in Taiwan, he said.

Interestingly, those interested in circuit design seem to view India favourably compared to China. Members of the delegation said that manpower attrition for such skills is high in China. "Also, China itself has hi-tech industries that makes demand for such skills high."