Tata Sons Chief Urges Group Companies To Adopt AI For Business Growth

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran has reportedly urged the Tata group companies to embrace artificial intelligence and technology to boost business growth amid a challenging geopolitical landscape.

An ET report, citing Chandrasekaran, said that Tata Electronics turned out to be one of the top ten businesses in the Tata Group in terms of revenue.

Additionally, new ventures of the group are also witnessing strong momentum in growth and profitability, it added. 

Chandrasekharan also highlighted the importance of domestic growth and cautioned against being distracted or making hasty decisions amid a volatile geo-political landscape in the aftermath of the US announcing reciprocal tariffs. 

Tata Electronics’ Leading India’s Semicon Manufacturing

Tata is at the forefront of India’s semiconductor manufacturing space. The Union Cabinet last year approved the country’s first semiconductor fab to be set up by the Tata Group in partnership with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (PSMC). 

Tata Electronics’ semiconductor fabrication plant will come up in Gujarat’s Dholera with a capacity of 50,000 wafers per month. 

In September last year, the company signed a definitive agreement with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) to establish its semiconductor Fab unit. 

As part of the agreement, PSMC will provide design and construction support to build the AI-enabled greenfield plant in Gujarat. It will also licence a broad portfolio of technologies and offer engineering support to Tata Electronics’ unit in Gujarat.

The upcoming semiconductor fab will manufacture chips for applications such as power management IC, display drivers, microcontrollers (MCU) and high-performance computing logic.

Last month, Tata Electronics signed a MoU with Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturers PSMC and Himax Technologies to develop display semiconductors with a focus to power televisions, smartphones and computer monitors and AI sensing chips.

Besides, Tata Projects is also set to complete the construction work of US chipmaker Micron Technology’s semiconductor assembly and test facility in Sanand near Ahmedabad by the year end.

As per multiple reports, this Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging (ATMP) facility will be one of the largest back-end semiconductor plants in the world. 

India’s Push For AI-Led Transformation 

In March last year, the Union Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission with an allocation of INR 10,372 Cr in the next five years, aiming to foster innovation in the homegrown AI ecosystem and implementing the Mission’s vision via a public-private partnership (PPP) model. 

Under the IndiaAI Mission, the Centre has also launched several other key initiatives, including the IndiaAI Compute Portal, which will offer affordable AI compute, network, storage and cloud services. Besides, a unified datasets platform AIKosha was also rolled out earlier this month.

Last week, Electronics and information technology ministry (MeitY) additional secretary Abhishek Singh said that the Centre is planning to finalise the “first set” of proposals for building indigenous foundational AI models in the next two weeks. 

The country’s conducive environment for advanced tech and AI led to a rise of more than 200 GenAI startups that have raised more than $1.2 Bn since 2020. Further, Inc42 estimates the homegrown GenAI market to cross the $17 Bn mark by 2030.