The Taiwanese company is a leading player in designing microcontrollers for NAND flash memory chips — memory which retains data even without power. The JV called MiPhi Semiconductors was set up with Micromax having a 55 per cent stake, while Phison held the rest. Mi­Phi has set up its plant in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. 

“Memory is the most critical component. As you do more compute, you requ­ire more storage. So, in the whole artificial intelligence (AI) value chain, memory is in Tier-I, and at the top. In India, we do not have these companies,” said Sharma, cofounder of MiPhi as well as Micromax. 

Sharma said that control over memory technology is vital for any country. “We need sovereign memory, otherwise we will keep on importing. MiPhi has come now to fill this gap. Phison is the number one company in microcontroller technology — the brain of the memory — in the world, and it supplies to everyone from Samsung to Micron. Phison is transferring technology to the JV,” he added. 

MiPhi, which has already started man­u­facturing and selling its products, exp­e­c­ts to hit ₹1,000 crore of revenues in the first year of operation, based on its quarterly revenue run rate. Plans are afoot to scale up quickly, especially with the growing shortage of memory chips around the world. While MiPhi did not divulge the numbers, those in the know say investment of ₹1,000 crore is being planned. The JV is focusing on enterprise-grade SSD. There are other kinds of memory too, like consumer memory (pen drives) and emb­edded memory, which is used in mobiles, automotive, telecom, amongst others. 

Sharma said: “Enterprise-grade SSD is the toughest to manufacture. Only seven companies in the world — including Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix —that make  wafers also make them. Phison (which does not have a wafer facility) has the technology, by virtue of which MiPhi has the technology. So, we design and manufacture our own enterprise SSD.” 

Asked whether the company will participate in the proposed Semiconductor Incentive 2.0, Sharma said they are talking with the government and will surely participate when it comes. 

According to Sharma, the market is huge — the global market for NAND memory itself is $270 billion per year. In India also there is a huge demand, which is met from imports. Sharma gave the example of the Andhra Pradesh government signing up for data centres with a capacity of 6 gigawatt-hour (GWh), which will have huge requirement for storage. MiPhi is already selling its memory products across segments.