Sandisk Plans Assembly Test Plant in India

HARSIMRAN JULKA NEW DELHI

Sandisk, the world’s largest maker of flash memory cards and pen drives, is planning to set up an assembly and test plant in India, its chief strategy officer and SVP Sumit Sadana told ET in a recent visit to India.
The company has over 50% market share of world's flash devices and its capacity is expected to run out in some plants in next two years.
“We are evaluating a global manufacturing, assembly and test plant in India. We are producing about 600 to 700 million units annually. I think we’ll definitely need another plant by 2013,” Mr Sadana said.
Sandisk’s global team met with government officials in the capital last week. “We are evaluating the government incentives, skills and eco-system,” he added. If Sandisk’s plans for an India plant fructify, it will be a shot in the arm for the government.
The department of IT has been trying to attract large investments from chip and memory makers for the last six years. The government’s earlier two attempts to attract such investments have failed miserably.
SemIndia, the only interested venture which had planned to set up an assembly plant in Andhra Pradesh, ran out of money, due to the recession in 2008. Not a single chip maker has come forth since then with a plan to invest, even as the one year window for doling out investments closed.
“Chip fabs need considerable amount of investment about $8 billion and I don’t think we’ll be opening up another fab. But a new assembly and test plant is definitely on our anvil,” said Mr Sadana. Sandisk estimates that the market for flash memory will grow to $4.5 billion by 2014. "We expect flash market to grow more with the rise of more tablet like devices, and a decline in hard disk market." Sandisk competes with rivals Samsung, Transcend, Kingston, Micron and others in the flash memory market. Besides consuming less space, flash memory is about 10 times expensive per GB compared to the hard disk drive but consumes almost a hundredth of the power, making the battery life of a device last for hours.
Big Drive
• The company’s capacity
is expected to run out in some plants in next two years

• If Sandisk’s India plans
fructify, it will be a shot in the arm for the Indian government