Medhini Group, a Malaysia-based project management firm serving high-tech industries, is in talks with several Indian companies for semiconductor-related projects.
Speaking to Digitimes Asia recently, Medhini Group CEO Joel William said that talks have been going on for the past year, and a deal may be reached within months. Details of the partnerships will be announced in due course.
The companies that Medhini is in talks with have strong capabilities in the chemical, food, and pharmaceutical segments and are seeking entry into the chip ecosystem.
"The potential partners are well-equipped with engineering and system fabrication capabilities with boots on the ground," William said. "Medhini Group will be providing tech transfer and ad-hoc SME support. We are exploring a few segments. One is, of course, the engineering side. In terms of mechanical and electrical engineering for semiconductors, cleanrooms are a major component, along with high-purity systems."
This comes amid India's strong push to build a local semiconductor industry. Last week, the government approved a proposal for fab from the conglomerate Tata. Multiple plans for OSAT plants are already in place, with companies like Micron having broken ground.
Malaysian companies interested in partnerships
William added that several Malaysia-based companies are interested in partnering with Indian counterparts in the high-tech sector, but difficulties in building connections are a deterrent. The Indian government recently held an Invest India event in Kuala Lumpur that attempted to address this.
"Many of the partners we engage with possess the necessary capabilities on the ground but lack the experience and expertise required to elevate their operations to the next level," William said. Concurrently, there are local companies in Malaysia that are experts in this field, yet they have not expanded their operations beyond Southeast Asia borders."
Specialized project management support
Medhini has collaborated with numerous leading global Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firms, focusing on executing high-tech sector projects across Singapore and Malaysia.
The company's project management team boasts extensive experience overseeing rapid deployment projects for multinational corporation clients within the semiconductor, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries.
"It is almost an art in the fast track project planning, design management, balancing tender package breakdown, evaluating vendor capability and capacity, as well as construction project management," William said.
The company plans to offer offline and online support, which includes relocating some key resources from Malaysia to India during the project bid and execution upon award.
"At the same time, we also have reciprocal arrangements to bring Indian engineers to Malaysia and support our ongoing projects within the high-tech sectors as a capacity-building initiative," William said. "Once they are trained here for one to two years, they can return to India and support future projects."
Keen on more partnerships
The ability for contractors and vendors to deliver quick projects is to prevent the team from taking too long to award packages and manage equipment suppliers' delivery. The delay often comes from prolonged negotiations, incomplete design, not understanding the required standards, poor workmanship, and multiple reworks, among other challenges.
"EPC players in Singapore and Malaysia often have pre-qualified vendors working with the EPC players on multiple projects over a long period of time," William said. "Buying in bulk and better cash flow management are key strengths to delivering projects quickly. We are trying to bring lessons learned from experience in Malaysia and Singapore to our partners, and eventually, this can also benefit the General Contractors and the client eventually."
The long-term plan for Medhini is to invest in setting up an office in India and hiring locally. As this will take time to be established, we will leverage our partner's strengths to penetrate the service sector quickly while we sort out further details to form a JV partnership with the right partners.
"We are happy to see the initiatives proposed by Invest India for foreign companies setting up companies in India," said William. "We will have follow-up meetings with Invest India to better understand the incentives and leverage them for quick market access."
