India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) today announced Mr. Anilkumar Muniswamy, Managing Director, SLN Technologies Pvt. Ltd. as Chairman of the Board of Director & Executive Council (EC) effective immediately. The new chairperson and EC are dedicated towards IESA's vision of 'making India the global hub for design and manufacturing' with special emphasis on 'innovation and entrepreneurship', for revamping the landscape of the ESDM ecosystem in India.

Speaking about his current role at IESA, Mr. Anilkumar Muniswamy, Chairman, IESA, said, "It's a great honour for me to be appointed as IESA Chairperson. IESA has been a frontrunner in policy recommendations, industry connect and creating initiatives for the growth of Electronics System Design Manufacturing (ESDM) ecosystem in India. My vision is to 'make India the central hub of ESDM industry' and IESA is best positioned to be the catalyst for realizing this vision. A collaborative effort will help accelerate the process and I am looking forward to working closely with the new executive council, the leaders of the member companies, government (centre and state), organizations, academia, media and our international partners to ensure that both electronics design and manufacturing see a substantial growth in the coming years."

"In addition to helping grow the existing ESDM ecosystem, we will be also focussing on nurturing areas like 'fabless design houses, global market access to Indian design companies, ESDM ready workforce, support innovations' that can lead the future of electronics design and manufacturing. I look forward to a continued collaboration with all the stakeholders with one goal of creating a thriving design and manufacturing capability in India," added Mr. Anilkumar Muniswamy.

The three-major thrust areas of IESA are as follows:

A. Innovation & Entrepreneurship  

(i) Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab (SFAL) with Govt. of Karnataka - The mission of SFAL is to promote hardware equipment and semiconductor chip design development in India

(ii) Electropreneur Park - Technical Incubation Center - with Ministry of Electronics and IT, Govt. of India, the objective of which is to support early stage start-ups in the ESDM sector from mentoring to funding

(iii) NETRA (National ESDM Technology Research Academy) is a think tank formed by IESA and the Electronics Sector Skill Council of India (ESSCI) to enable VLSI/ESDM incubation in college campuses. The vision of NETRA is to transform engineering campuses into ESDM Product Innovation Centers (EPIC) through industry-academia partnerships. One of the major, objectives of this initiative is to create an ecosystem for start-ups in the VLSI/ESDM domain

(iv) VLSI & ESDM Center excellence - The objective of this initiative is to design and manufacture semiconductor chips in India

B. Partnerships - India and International

IESA has tied up with many state governments for facilitating FDI into the respective states in ESDM. Partnership with alliances - both International and Indian - to strengthen the ESDM ecosystem through innovation, knowledge transfer and investment. IESA has already laid its seeds in bringing investment from Taiwan into India. IESA has also partnered with the state governments to build the ESDM ecosystem through clusters - brownfield and greenfield, incubations centers and skill development programs.

C. Ease of doing business in India 

(i) IESA has been seamlessly working with various government agencies such as MEITY, NITI Aayog and various other relevant bodies to bring out favourable policies to enable Indian electronics and semiconductor industry to achieve its goals.

(ii) Creation of CIGs (Core Initiative Group) for addressing sector specific issues. Currently there are 6 CIGs to address sector such as Aerospace & Defence, Automotive, Broadcast/STB, Fabless, IoT, Skilling

(iii) IESA has lobbied with central government for reduction of customs duties on components to help the local manufacturing industry and addressed inverted duty issues.

In addition to the above, IESA is actively engaging with many more activities. The current executive council will continue working towards making this vision a reality.

India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA)