From 98% Imported to 98% Local: How Felcon and Four-C-Tron Are Building India's Semiconductor Cleanroom Ecosystem

For more than three decades, UK-based cleanroom specialist Felcon Limited and Bengaluru-based Four-C-Tron have quietly built some of India's most important semiconductor infrastructure  starting with the country's earliest wafer fab and continuing through today's wave of OSAT facilities and new-generation fabs. In a wide-ranging conversation with EEHerald, Felcon Managing Director Ian Mutton and Four-C-Tron Founder Chandrasekhara discussed how India's cleanroom supply chain has flipped from near-total import dependence to near-total local sourcing, why semiconductor cleanrooms are fundamentally different from pharma cleanrooms, the mistakes first-time fab builders make, and their plans to manufacture cleanroom equipment locally through a new Indian entity.

Felcon has supplied cleanroom and laboratory equipment since 1971, and Mutton has been building cleanrooms in India alongside Chandrasekhara since the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their first Indian project was the cleanroom for Indian Telephone Industries  the country's one of the earliest complete wafer fab  which, remarkably, is still operating three decades later.

"When we first started working together... we had to outsource probably 98% of all the components, whether it be the flooring, the filters, ductwork, everyt...