Microchip Tech Opens R&D Facility in Kokapet

HYDERABAD: Microchip Technology on Monday inaugurated a new research and development centre at One Golden Mile in Kokapet in the presence of IT minister K.T. Rama Rao, who exhorted the company officials to invest in the Telangana Mobility Valley.

The company, a provider of smart, connected and secure embedded control solutions, also announced its plan to invest $300 million (about Rs 2,460 crore) in phases to expand its operations in India. It also shared plans for the Kokapet facility, which currently employs around 500 people, saying it plans to double the workforce soon.

Speaking at the launch, Rama Rao said that Hyderabad’s IT sector has been on an upswing and has done better than Bengaluru, Chennai and other hubs. “It created one in three jobs created across India in 2021-22. In 2022-23, it accounted for 44 per cent of all IT jobs created across India. The IT exports touched Rs 2.41 lakh crore, a near four-fold increase from Rs 56,000 crore in 2014. The workforce in the IT segment touched 9.05 lakh in 2023, up from 3.33 lakh in 2014,” the minister said.

Rama Rao said the state was seeing an advent of allied new verticals, and, asking Microchip to consider investing in the Telangana Mobility Valley, said that the state is now giving a push to the VLSI segment.

“The state, through the Telangana Academy of Skills and Knowledge, will train about 1,000 people in the semiconductor space to create a talent pool. The company can choose to hire these candidates as it has plans to double the workforce in Hyderabad,” he said.

Ganesh Moorthy, president and chief executive officer of Microchip, said: “Microchip is making a strategic commitment to growing our operations in India, whose meteoric growth has established it as one of the top sources of business and technical resources in our sector.”

Microchip’s planned investments are focused on improvements to Microchip’s Bengaluru and Chennai facilities. It is also expanding and enhancing its engineering labs to serve technical and business support requirements of a large set of customers in India.  In all, it has about 2,500 employees in India.                

The India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) and Counterpoint Research recently reported that India's semiconductor market is expected to reach $64 billion by 2026, which is nearly triple its 2019 size of $22.7 billion. The country now accounts for 20 per cent of the total global design workforce.