Semiconductors And Energy Policy The Link Driving Indias Growth Energonomics Ep 18

TITLE: Semiconductors & energy policy: The link driving India’s growth | Energonomics | EP 18 CHANNEL: The Hindu businessline DATE: 2026-06-05 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Energy Nomics. This is your host, Richa Mishra. India is using two main plans to build a modern, self-reliant economy. It’s semiconductor policy and its energy policy. Together, these policies aim to boost tech manufacturing, shift to clean energy, stop relying on other countries, and in making India a global hub. To understand the nuances, I spoke to Mr. Anuj Narayan, Vice President, Power Development, Power Semiconductors, SINE Semiconductors. Where he leads the development of next-generation intelligent power solution.

Thank you, Mr. Narayan, for spending some time with us.

Thanks, Richa, for having me.

Today, everyone is talking about semiconductor policy and India’s energy policy. And it is said that India’s semiconductor ambitions are directly intertwined with its national energy policy. I wanted to understand from you how is it so?

There’s two ways to answer that. You know, for most people, when you say semiconductor and energy in the same breath, um you know, the the first thing that comes to mind is is a lot of power. Um and you know, with with India, especially, you know, the thing that’s that’s perceived is, “Hey, we are our power infrastructure is not good enough to have semiconductor fabs.” And that’s been the narrative for, you know, the last 30 years, which has really prevented us from having large-scale wafer fabs in India. Um so, that’s that’s one way. And you know, and it’s justified because, you know, if you look at a modern 300 mm fab, you know, it draws millions of megawatts of power. Uh, put that in context, you know, some of our best nuclear power plants in India are about 500 megawatts. Uh, Srisailam which is, you know, flagship hydroelectric plant is almost 1,200 megawatts. So, you’re looking at, you know, fabs that take 200 or 300 megawatts of power, um, and and the power projects themselves are not, uh, you know, not not big enough really to to support the infrastructure development of fabs.

Now, the other way of looking at it is, uh, is power delivery, and which is which is really the way that that scientist is approaching this problem, and we’re looking at it and saying, you know, India has power infrastructure where we reach, you know, small villages, and and, you know, I think our government has done a good job of of getting light bulb on in the smallest remote places in India, but we are among the the lossiest power delivery networks in the world. If you look at, uh, you know, just what is lost purely in delivery in India is about 20 to 22%. Um, so what what scientist is saying is, hey, I’ve got 20 to 22% that’s just lost delivery. If I can recover that with with the really smart intelligent power solutions, uh, semiconductor solutions specifically, um, I immediately have, uh, much more available power for for the load and consumers, and and continue to to fuel India’s ambitions.

So, my connected question is, you know, as as we are aware that that there’s a power demand, and you know, in certain states are offering various incentives also for the players to come in. I’m really luring them, uh, to come in, uh, which is fair enough. It it it is an opportunity which everyone is looking at. But, uh, from your perspective, are there challenges in executing both in India? I mean, both together in India. I would rather rephrase my question and say, are there challenges in executing both together in India, particularly structural bottlenecks?

So, you know, structural bottlenecks do exist, and I I would say this is not an India-specific problem. You know, distribution companies world over um you know, have you know, limited finances. They are they usually very large organizations that have to manage maintenance and repairs on on massive grids. Um and and it’s it’s the same in India with, you know, our our state boards. You know, the average amount of time they spend just to keep the lights on probably consumes most of their resources. Um now, you know, having said that, you know, there’s really no no reason for us to not not make progress. You know, looking at you know, like I said, with the power delivery, there’s you know, you’ve got you’ve got AC, you know, that’s being transmitted at very high voltages in the in in the megawatts, for example. Um in the kilowatts, sorry, across the you know, across the the country, and then that gets stepped down to a low voltage AC that gets stepped down to even lower voltage lines AC. Um and then, you know, that has to be converted to DC to run a lot of appliances and and other things. So, there’s this massive, you know, chain of of losses, and expecting the grid infrastructure to be redeveloped overnight is is unrealistic. It’s it’s happened maybe in in in the case of one recent country that I can think of, but otherwise world over it’s the same problem.

Um now, I like to look at at structural bottlenecks largely in the context, for India at least, with comparing it to our telecom revolution. Uh so, you know, India has a massive landline infrastructure. Um we’ve had, you know, we’ve we built it over over decades. Um and it’s unreasonable, you know, to think that, you know, 20 years ago or 25 years ago the mandate from the government was, “Let’s go upgrade all our landlines uh to to fiber and make them really fast.” But what what the government did was they said, “You know, this is got looking impossible. We cannot replace every wire and every switchboard out there. Why don’t we create policy that’s friendly to the private sector to to go a leapfrog, and there’s no need to modernize our landline infrastructure. We’ll go directly to to mobile.” And what what happened there was interesting because now suddenly you had private players that were able to set up cellular networks which were not dependent on the landline infrastructure. Uh we didn’t have, you know, BSNL go off and create um the the the the mobile champion of the world. We had the private sector Japan. And, you know, and this is something that is is very similar to power because, you know, if you look at how did we get cell phone reception to the remotest part of of India? It’s because we put up cell towers that had generators and car batteries. And if you think about it, they were independent cells that were not dependent on the power grid. They were not dependent on the the landline grid. And so, we were able to to to leapfrog that uh that revolution. Um so, you know, in my opinion, I think, you know, structural challenges will remain. I I would say it’s not a reason to wait. Um it’s it’s a it’s a moment to to leapfrog those challenges.

So, that’s quite optimistic way of putting it that we Indians are optimistic always. But my next question, you know, just takes forward what we were just talking is how other stakeholders dealing with it? And, you know, I would like to uh add on to it is that do you think microgrids can be a solution? Looking at the demand which your industry has.

I I like to look at infrastructure as as part of the problem. Like I said, you know, there’s it’s it’s obviously it’s what you have today is part of the problem. Now, if you break that up, there’s there’s several different problems here. There’s an infrastructure problem, but there’s also a semiconductor problem, which is which is why I said so, you know, it’s investing so much into into power. It’s because uh you can you can decide you want to to leapfrog uh and there are solutions in the world that system-level solution that help you to leapfrog, but if the the semiconductor content that you have to make that leapfrog is still coming from overseas and is being imported, uh you are now you can only move [clears throat] as fast as your supply chain allows it. If there’s a blockage on a certain product or shortage of a certain product worldwide, uh your your sudden your your your modernization plan uh will suddenly come to a halt. So, uh you know, you have to look at this as an infrastructure problem, a semiconductor problem, a chip design problem, a product problem all together. Uh and and try to solve that uh solve solve the whole puzzle so that you’ve got a nice robust plan that you can execute to. So, microgrids are are obviously a very interesting uh you know, angle to solve this uh you know, solve the the transformation that we need.

Uh I like to look at microgrids as you know, as as three different um you know, three different angles, I would say. Uh you know, the first is is generation. You know, the you know, renewable energy push in India is massive, right? We’ve got almost 500 gigawatts of projects that being set up just from renewable energy. And this is a combination of you know, solar, we have abundant sunlight we have or or wind energy and and, you know, and other forms. Now, you know, renewable energy like solar, for example, is produced in DC form. Uh if you can avoid having to take that DC, convert it back to AC, transmit it over the grid, uh and then convert it back to AC uh when it reach it’s reaching the home and then do a couple more DC conversions, uh you save 2 to 3% of losses uh in in every stage. So, I would say with for a country with a large renewable footprint, uh you know, DC microgrids just make a lot of sense because you’re avoiding the conversion uh portion to get it to the to the load. [clears throat]

Uh the other part of it is storage, you know, DC is is very storage-friendly. Uh you know, if you think about a battery, it’s it’s a DC mechanism of storage. Uh when you have AC voltage, you’re converting that to DC and then when you want to use it again, you convert it back to to AC. So, it saves you a lot of loss in in double conversion. Um and then the third part is is the load and the usage. You know, India’s usage, you know, if you if you just look at, you know, where power is used in India, the the two largest consumers are heavy industry um and and and pumps, uh which is because of our large agricultural sector. So, I think there’s something like 20 to 30 million pumps in India that are running at any given time. Um so, you know, both of these applications can benefit heavily from from DC voltages. You know, as manufacturing becomes more robotic, uh there’s opportunities to build factories completely on on their own independent DC grid. Um there’s, you know, opportunities to convert the the old, you know, 50 Hz AC motors that we have into into more efficient DC motors. Um and then the you know, the the the big elephant in the room, which is data centers, where we’re looking heavily to become one of the top data center countries in the world. Uh, that’s all DC power. Um, if you’re having to convert it 10 times, um, you know, you’re you’re suddenly going to be sitting with the same 20 20% losses before you even start processing a single, uh, a single token. Um, so, you know, you know, Signet is really looking at at at DC very, very carefully. Uh, we’ve, uh, you know, looked strategically at, you know, what does what does this independence from the grid scenario look like? Um, and we’re making all of the right investments in in the semiconductor space to to solve that that power delivery problem. You know, we refer to it as as the first mile because it’s it’s the first mile from from generation to uh, to the to the node.

Yeah, I’m I’m glad you elaborated on the microgrid solution and, you know, because the recent latest development has been how Andhra has facilitated it for Google. Uh, and of course, uh, uh, I I have my reservations on it because as a backup plan, too, you are going to go to the main grid only, but that’s another debate which can happen. Uh, and um, you know, uh, my last question to you would be that, you know, uh, we as you rightly pointed out, there’s no ideal road map, and uh, you know, it’s not India-specific challenge only. The these challenges are there in other countries and in other places, also. But, coming from where you are and the position which your company holds here, what what could be the way ahead? I mean, where where do you players like you stand?

So, you know, I think know, looking at just microgrids, you know, the government already has initiatives where, you know, they are starting to solicit offers for for developers to start developing, you know, robust microgrids. Um now, what’s interesting is I also feel that the you know, the India semiconductor policy has been been extremely friendly for for a transition like this. If you look at, you know, schemes like the DLI or the RBI schemes from IP, what these are encouraging is for players like Sign and others uh to really innovate in the semiconductor space. And in our case, you know, we’re we’re looking at at power as where we want to play. Um and and these schemes will really help accelerate us where products are available in India from an Indian manufacturer. Um and we have independence from from uh from imports essentially uh to to make this happen. So, it’s a combination of of government policy at the system level, the grid level, and then also on the the semiconductor level.

Uh what lies ahead, I think, is uh you know, is there’s a lot of ambition, which is which is very typically um you know, seen in India when we’re we’re we’re at crossroads. Um you know, for Sign, you know, specifically, there’s there’s kind of, you know, there’s few angles we’re taking to this. You know, we realize that um you know, power is not you know, power is not low voltage, and power is not high voltage. You know, the the biggest, you know, way you can solve the problem is look at the complete uh look at the complete chain, look at all aspects of conversion. Um so, you know, we are working on kind of have say three main initiatives today that uh you know, that that already in motion, and we’ve already started making investments on. The first is uh is working on custom power, and specially on custom high voltage power. Uh and our aim really there is to look at, you know, grid down to workable voltages in the DC space, and uh and solve any problems from you know from grid down to uh you know almost to the line level going going into the house or going into the going into the the the load. Uh so that’s that’s one aspect. You know, we’ve got decades of experience in in power. We’re we’re starting to really build our chops in the in the high voltage and high power space. I feel we’re in a good space there.

Um the second is you know our our uh collaboration with Navitas. So, you know, every high voltage system in the world today, you know, especially the modern ones uh use wide band gap semiconductors. Uh India is extremely dependent today on on imports for wide band gap whether it be gallium nitride or or silicon carbide. Uh so, our uh you know, our partnership with Navitas really helps us open up that that domestic ecosystem for wide band gap because I feel high voltage and wide band gap have to coexist. There’s you know, there’s very little chance of success if you if you don’t have the the wide band gap technology. Uh so, we’re investing heavily there and you know, very soon uh you know, there we will you know, customers will be able to go to an Indian company with an Indian source. We’ve already made announcements on the parts. Uh so, that helps solve you know, some of high voltage challenges.

Uh you know, as you know, we also you know, acquired a company called Kinetic Technologies. Uh you know, we closed in in early April. And what Kinetic really brings to the table is is power management. So, they have uh you know, 250 products, 100 plus patents in in the space of power management. And that will really help uh complement everything we’re doing on the high voltage side with a much stronger medium and low voltage uh offering.

Um so, you know, really just to summarize it I think you know, a combination of good semiconductor policy from the government, uh really good you know energy power delivery policy from the government and then you know private players like us making the investments in in the semiconductor space will will really help India uh succeed in the future.

So basically uh to sum it up uh what we’re trying to uh say is that we are on the right track, things are happening. It may not happen immediately, but the entire ecosystem if it is synergized and goes together, then uh we are looking at a brighter days ahead. Uh uh vis-a-vis both the policies going together is concerned.

You know like I said the leapfrog is is what we have to keep an eye on. Um you know if we if we try to solve the you know the the infrastructure problem overnight, uh you know that is going to be a challenge that takes decades of uh of transformation, but with the right policies in place, with the right semiconductor ecosystem manufacturing ecosystem, I feel I feel uh you know we continue this environment, we’re on right track to uh transforming the energy grid in India.

So basically it’s never too late. We we are there and we will reach our goal. So thank you so much Mr. Narayan for sparing this time with us. Thank you, Richa. This is all we have in this episode of Energynomics till we meet again. Thank you. For the first time listeners, Energynomics is a podcast and video series which focuses on decoding the complexities of the energy sector. We try to examine how geopolitics, government policies, and economic shifts impact energy prices and security. Through the episode, we try to dissect and demystify the issues which have a direct impact on you and I.