Exclusive: Kaynes To Invest $50 Million In Automotive Chip Lab

Kaynes Semicon is investing around $50 million in a reliability and failure analysis laboratory as it prepares to scale its automotive semiconductor business, Raghu Panicker told Autocar Professional. The facility is expected to become operational in December and will initially focus on automotive applications before expanding to space-grade semiconductors.

“This is somewhere around $50 million,” Panicker said, adding that much of the investment will go into equipment. “It is a reliability and failure analysis lab. Start with automotive, and then slowly get into space-grade semiconductors.”

Panicker said a facility with comparable capabilities is currently not available in Asia. “Currently, this will be one of its kind in Asia. You would see some of those labs in Europe and the US, but none in Asia,” he said. “This will have all the latest machines to test the smallest of components, subsystems, modules and the full system.”

Automotive accounts for around 50–60% of the wider Kaynes Group’s revenue, according to Panicker. Kaynes Semicon’s business is currently predominantly industrial, but he said the company is seeing traction from automotive customers.

“Automotive takes a longer time for qualification. Automotive needs reliability,” he said. “It is very important that a chip that goes into an automotive OEM should not fail. There should be zero defect, zero failure, because life is involved.”

Kaynes is building its automotive qualification capabilities around IATF and AEC-Q requirements. A smaller version of the reliability and failure analysis laboratory is already available at Unit 1, while the larger facility will come up at Unit 2.

The company is also involved in a semiconductor localisation programme with a major two-wheeler manufacturer in South India. Panicker said the manufacturer is looking to localise seven automotive chips, with Kaynes working on at least two.

“There is already a company in the south of India, very close to Bangalore. A big two-wheeler major has started to look at localisation of seven automotive chips,” he said. Asked about Kaynes’ involvement, Panicker added: “I’ll be working with at least a couple of them.”

“The time is not that far when you will see an India-designed, India-manufactured chip going into that two-wheeler,” he said.

Kaynes is also targeting automotive business outside India. Panicker said the company already has purchase orders connected with global automotive customers, although he declined to disclose their identities.

“The power modules that we are doing will go to some of those names that you took,” he said when asked about opportunities with global OEMs and their suppliers. “We already have a purchase order in hand with some of those names, which I cannot take. By Q1, we will come back and show you the product that we have done is going into some of these Tier-1 suppliers and OEMs.”

Power semiconductors form a key part of Kaynes’ automotive plans, particularly for EV applications. Panicker pointed to power modules, electronic and vehicle control units, and lighting systems as areas driving semiconductor demand.

“If you look at EVs, there is a large consumption of power,” he said. “Power modules, engine control units, vehicle control units, lighting solutions and various other modules have a large consumption of power. That is one of the reasons Kaynes decided to do a lot of products in power.”

The laboratory will eventually support Kaynes’ move into space-grade sensors, electronics, radiation-hardened devices and FPGAs. For now, Panicker said the focus is clear: “Automotive-grade qualification is the key.”