Singapore-based Mindox Techno founder and CEO Thirunavukkarasu said that the Coimbatore has the know-how in engineering, materials and has talent.

He further said that it is better situated than many other places. Local industries capabilities have to be modified for semicon industry. Some of the units in the automotive industry already have standardisation and it is easy to shift them.

In an interview to TOI, Thirunavukkarasu said, "We have a team of 140 employees in Coimbatore, including 15 in product development, who we took to Singapore for training and now they are helping train our suppliers. Currently, Mindox works with three suppliers. Initially, we faced a lot of challenges in meeting the semiconductor industry's requirements."

"The suppliers would say, 'we made things for the last 25 years, but you are asking for something we do not understand. They were into textile and auto component equipment. We asked them to make different components and assessed where they stood. It's a stringent process and the team from Singapore analysed it. First product they built met only 20% of the industry requirement," he added.

He further said, "There was a lot of scepticism around the effort. Now we are shipping products to Japan, which is known for minimal tolerance in manufacturing. We developed it over a year. We trained our suppliers in handling materials, safety, cleanliness, finishing, tolerance of the components, and using the right tools Semiconductor industry is not complicated, but everybody needs to follow certain processes and simplify. We are helping them to bridge the gaps, With this, we can focus on building products and scale our operations. These suppliers are much bigger than Mindox."