Thursday, February 23, 2006

Hyderabad gets its fab

It can't get bigger than this. Hyderabad has bagged the prestigious Fab City project. Fir a city that has been struggling get a big ticket investment in IT hardware, this is great news.
In a stunning coup, Hyderabad beat IT heavyweight Bangalore to bag the FabCity project, which will host India’s first major silicon chip manufacturing facility.

The project will see a veritable watershed of foreign investment in Shamshabad, with 3 billion dollars to be brought in by the anchor company SemIndia in collaboration with the international chip major AMD, and more by other chip manufacturers. Just SemIndia is likely to create 5,000 jobs directly and thou-sands more indirectly through the influx ofa bout 200 suppliers and ancillaries

After careful consideration of all the relevant factors, the promoters of the project decided on Hyderabad. These factors included the weather, roads, availability of a semi-skilled work force, electricity, water and proximity to an international airport. Fab City is to be located on 1,200 acres of land to be given by the AP government in Maheshwaram mandal near Shamshabad. The ground breaking ceremony will take place in a month’s time.

The project is to be executed in two phases, the first involving investment of$ 1 billion and the second $ 2 billion. There will be two projects in the first phase. The first project, which will begin right after the ground breaking ceremony, will involve the setting up of assembly and testing facilities in which about 5,000 people will be employed. Production will start a year later.

The second involves the construction of the actual chip manufacturing facility, known in the trade as a fab. This will be a two-year endeavour. The buildings will come up in the first year followed by the installation of the equipment in the second. The job creation will gather force in the third year, with about 5,000 people streaming into the facility.

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