Vedanta ropes in veteran David Reed as CEO to drive chip biz

BENGALURU: Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta Ltd on Monday named industry veteran David Reed to head its semi-conductor unit where it is looking to invest $20 billion to manufacture chips essential for mobile phones to laptops and TV sets.

Agarwal said the group is looking to start manufacturing semiconductors at Dholera in Gujarat in 2-3 years. “We will start with $5 billion investment and scale it up as years go by,” he said.

The semi-conductors will be manufactured in joint venture with Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn. Vedanta holds a 63 per cent interest and the remaining is with Foxconn in the joint venture.

The company plans to initially produce 40,000 wafers a month.

Before joining Vedanta, Reed was with NXP Semiconductors, where he was executive vice president and general manager of global operations.