India has the tenth largest economy in the world, based on statistics from the World Bank, and it is a large consumer of electronic products and services. As a result, the electronics market in India is growing rapidly. It is expected to rise from a reported US $68 billion in 2012 to US $400 billion by 2030. 

Currently, with the exception of the services market, almost all of this value is imported, representing a sizeable outflow of currency. In fact, without an internal semiconductor manufacturing capability, by 2030 India's imports of electronics alone will surpass oil as its #1 outflow of cash. This will contribute directly to an increasing trade deficit for India, pulling cash reserves out of the country.

Without the capability to manufacture semiconductors internally, India is also at risk of not being able to:

• Grow an indigenous product/system ecosystem as other countries have done.
• Move beyond being a low-cost assembler of manufactured products to reap the economic benefits of a strong manufacturing base.
• Absorb its high technology university graduates.

We share the vision of the Indian state and central goverments—to unleash the power of India. The creation of a wafer fab will energize the effort to build a thriving electronics ecosystem. It will spur economic employment, technical training of the labor market, and the growth of an ancillary technical services market such as equipment services, lab services, test and assembly manufacturing and fabless semiconductor product companies.

The entrepreneurial mindset in India is an advantage that works in favor of this ecosystem. The wafer fab will help grow the ecosystem, as entrepreneurs figure out what is needed and work to supply it. We believe this will help release India’s creative and entrepreneurial forces to develop globally competitive chips, products and systems.

Hence our goal is to build a wafer fab that can:

1. Enable the electronics industry in India to use semiconductor products manufactured internally.
2. Serve as the hub of an Indian ecosystem for electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM).

Cricket intends to partner with government, universities, suppliers, and others to grow a competitive ecosystem over time. Equipment suppliers will be encouraged to set up shop in India. We will partner with universities and training centers to augment their curriculum to provide graduates who have the analog and wafer fab skills to immediately work in this ecosystem. We will partner with pieces of the ecosystem—design services, IP suppliers—that exist to some extent today.