Micromax, Phison to design, manufacture storage chipsets in India

Electronics company Micromax and Taiwan's storage chip company Phison have set up a joint venture, MiPhi, to design and manufacture artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled storage chipsets modules locally, a senior official of the Indian firm said.

Micromax Informatics Co-founder Rahul Sharma told PTI that the company has started production at its Noida facility.

"Phison is a leader in NAND controller and NAND storage technologies. We have partnered with them to set up a joint venture in India in which Micromax will have a 55% stake and 45% will be with Phison," Sharma said.

He said the firm will focus on designing storage chipsets for servers, which is a very important element for any country from both security and strategic perspective.

"With this venture, we aim to bring down the cost of GPU by one-tenth... the lowest per token cost in the world. This will help us in disrupting the AI landscape not only in India but also in specific agreed-upon regions," Sharma said.

He said trials with a few leading organisations in India will be completed this month and commercial shipments will begin in the first quarter of 2025.

"There are only a few companies that are providing storage solutions. It is very important for countries, especially India, which has no indigenous storage solutions company. Our joint venture will help reduce dependence on foreign technologies, as we will have our own design and manufacturing," Sharma said.

He said the company will hire freshers and train them to develop the storage technology.

"Our concept is designed first for India and then for the world. Our aspiration is to get the first design ready in 2 years. We are building up a team and expect to have 1,000 engineers in the next 3 years. Phison will train all of them," Sharma said.

He added that the company will make AI adoptive storage solutions.

The company will source wafers from existing players and then use them to make storage modules.

The company will set up local sales teams across India with a focus on embedded solutions for automobiles, IoT, mobile devices, data centres, IT hubs, consumer devices, and removable storage devices and systems.