New Delhi: US-based semiconductor design major Synaptics is looking at a rapid business upside from the Make in India initiative, specifically in areas of continuous glucose monitors, smart meters, and wearables where demand for locally-made devices is rising.
Synaptics president and chief executive Michael Hurlston told Mint in an interaction that a large opportunity has emerged from local manufacturers of these categories of devices that were looking for providers of semiconductors and software to increase the scale of local manufacturing.
“We see a big push in India now, particularly through the medical distributors, who are sourcing products from Europe or from US, they want to have a Made-in-India approach to continuous glucose monitoring and we are now engaging on that initiative,” Hurlston said.
“India sources almost all meters that go on the sides of homes to measure electrical power consumption, water consumption, gasoline consumption, natural gas consumption from overseas. We are seeing a big push now for local industries to make smart meters. And we are engaging because the smart meter manufacturers don’t have the semiconductor and software capability that we think we can bring to the table,” he added.
Hurlston said Synaptics was reducing costs of its solutions to corner a larger share of the global and Indian market.
“We’re pushing cost as an initiative and it’s important for the Indian market. But, all markets have sections that are going to be even more cost-sensitive and can give up performance to get cost. With this new low-cost initiative, where we are dropping our space, our size quite considerably, we can play in probably 80%-85% of the global market and still make very good margins,” he said.
Synaptics, which developed touch-sensitive pads for laptops and computers besides doing end-to-end design and deployment of chips for companies like Apple and Flex, expects the India market to make about 5% of the $9.2-billion world connectivity market over the next five years, up from less than 1% today, on the back of the new product lines, including wearables.
However, the India market will still take time to become a significant player in the contingency strategies of global value chains amid geopolitical shifts that pose a challenge for design companies since most components continue to be sourced from China and Taiwan. “The reality in a semiconductor supply chain, India is as yet not significant player, there’s no ability for us to move supply chain to India,” he said.
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