Gujarat eyes 1,500 apartments to house Tata fab staff, suppliers

The Gujarat government is enabling the setting up of 1,500 residential units to house expats and other employees of the Tata Group and its suppliers at Dholera in Ahmedabad district where the conglomerate is building India’s first semiconductor fabrication unit.

"There is an availability of about 275 apartments currently of which about 250 have been occupied by the Tata Group and their suppliers and other ecosystem companies, while 225 are nearing completion," said Mona Khandhar, principal secretary at the Department of Science and Technology in Gujarat. "They are in Dholera, in the vicinity of the upcoming fab and have been occupied by the teams presently stationed there."

Apart from these 500 units, construction has begun for another 1,000 apartments which will be available by around February-March next year, she said. These are like serviced apartments and come with one, two or three bedrooms.

These facilities are being built in the Dholera Special Investment Region. Tata Electronics’ upcoming Rs 91,000 crore fab is expected to generate more than 20,000 direct and indirect skilled jobs.

Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony of the Tata unit at Dholera in March 2024, union minister for electronics and information technology Ashwani Vaishnaw predicted that the first chip from Dholera would be out by December 2026.

"The Gujarat government has not built these (residential) facilities directly," Khandhar said. "The plots have been auctioned by the special purpose vehicle set up by the Gujarat government and private developers have taken on the projects. These apartments are different from the ones that the Tata Group is looking to set up on their own."

In the first phase, 10 acres have been allotted to the Tata Group and it is expected that they will complete 530 apartments by mid-2027, she said.

"Since the Tata Group is an anchor investor, whenever they need to be consulted, we consult them so that everyone works in tandem," she said.

The Gujarat government is also providing support by building facilities for the employees of Tata Group and its suppliers, many of whom are expats. A fire station, school, hospital, desalination plant, hotel and other amenities like a 'Global Tent City' are also being set up there.

ET reported on March 29 that the Gujarat government was aiming to recreate the “look and feel” of the home countries of the expats in Dholera. The Global Tent City, for instance, is expected to house food streets from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, the US and some European nations. A high-end mall and a hotel or guesthouse will also come up there.

Tata Electronics has been hiring top executives from chip makers like Intel and GlobalFoundries. ET reported on May 26 that the company had hired Tim McIntosh from Intel as vice-president and head of operations and manufacturing excellence of Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test (TSAT).

Tata Electronics chief executive and managing director Randhir Thakur too had come from Intel. In April, the company appointed GlobalFoundries’ Asia president KC Ang as president and head of Tata Semiconductor Manufacturing.