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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Tata Electronics is organized the same way as TCS - they want to be a middle manager who isn't directly investing in R&D due to margins.

By maintaining the partnership with a foreign partner, they can get fairly advanced manufacturing IP and knowhow without having to R&D from scratch.

Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations (all the way back to the British Raj), nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar to China or Russia/USSR in the 20th century.

This also helps adjacent Tata Motors, as they were severely impacted by the chips shortage and the battery shortage (for their EV division), along with Tata Advanced Systems (the defense contractor) who need commodity chips for a number of it's armament SKUs.

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India is on various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech thoroughout cold war and even until recently. Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s. Sanctions on Indian started to ease after 123 agreement, but India is still on US entity list restriction.

There is difference though, as most major Indian companies hardly invest in R&D and are happy to just keep using licensed IP from west. Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite.

> various blacklists of various western govt for military or advanced tech

Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime.

Until a couple years ago (like 2015 or 2016 I think), all Indian defense manufacturing and R&D was done by PSUs like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited, Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, etc

> Pentium chips were denied even as late as 90s

For Nuclear Non-Proliferation reasons, which was done by the Indian public sector.

India straight up didn't have a private sector MIC until the 2010s.

> India is still on US entity list restriction

It's public sector units, not the private sector players like Tata who have work with companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing for over 20 years.

> Indian companies hardly invest in R&D ... Indian companies, and general public, have very little risk appetite

It's because of the financials. India allows 100% foreign ownership in R&D FDI, so there's no reason for Tata Electronics to try and build a local chip design R&D arm when Nvidia and Intel have massive R&D labs in Bangalore and Hyderabad that have been chugging along since the 2000s and can pay salaries in USD.

There is some incipient work on making indigenous RISC-V architecture chips, but it looks like bullshit to me.

> Indian private sector corporations were excluded from the sanctions regime.

Most blacklists are regarding product codes. No separate carve out for pvt companies. Sure after 123 agreement, most restrictions are being negotiated and lifted slowly and India is not being added to new blacklists. But, that is recent phenomenon.

> but it looks like bullshit to me.

Can't it be used for things like smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things' or even that is tall order considering their capabilities?

> smart power meters, water supply, or myriad other non-mobile 'smart things'

I can buy a commodity AMD processor for less.

>Indian companies don't have the need for 100% IP transfers like China because most have had shared IP partnerships with Western countries for generations

Not true at all. Even the indian space agency was sanctioned till few years back.

ISRO is a PSU. It's not private sector.

> * nor have private sector Indian entities ever faced sanctions similar *

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