The talk in town is that Vedanta Group and smartphone brands Oppo and Vivo, laptop manufacturers and electronic device makers are actively involved in plans to roll out semiconductor chips through the former’s soon to be announced semiconductor plant in India.

These discussions are said to be in preliminary round, with the two aforementioned smartphone brands, including certain automaker sectors, seem to have displayed immense interest towards semiconductor wafers. Typically smartphones are known to use wafers in the 28-65 nm category among other appliances, with Vedanta’s interest areas focusing into this segment.

At the dawn of this year, Vedanta striked a tie up with Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, to draw on the Centre’s $10-billion incentive package unveiled late last year through a multi-billion dollar semiconductor manufacturing plan.

As a part of the tieup, the group is already engaged in talks with customers and is developing MoUs with them.

Foxconn, known to be Apple Inc’s largest suppliers, however, supplying to chips to Apple is not the immediate target of the company, since Apple phones require chips that are smaller in size. Yet it is reported that the 28 to 22 nm nodes that are in the building stage will likely have other smartphone makers planning to use them.

Vedanta is hopeful in accumulating interest from the chip consumer ecosystem such as device makers once the plant is announced and the associated work takes place.

It is already in talks with states namely Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana to set up its semiconductor plant in India. It is said to have made technical assessments of the offer made by Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana qualifying them as ‘attractive’.

The Centre gave its word implying a contribution of 50 percent of the project cost under the Rs.76,000-crore Semicon India Program, with ISMC Digital already in plans of setting up a semiconductor plant in Karnataka. Another applicant for the semiconductor fab incentives under the scheme is the Singapore-based IGSS.

The electronics and IT ministry has formed an advisory committee, which includes pioneers like Intel veteran Vinod Dham, to help with the endeavor, which was launched in December 2021 to increase indigenous semiconductor manufacturing.