ATS India (Automated Tooling Systems India) – a leading industrial automation and engineering services company, today announced a strategic partnership with Hirata Corporation – a globally renowned Japanese manufacturer of advanced automation and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Under this partnership, ATS India will serve as Hirata’s exclusive distribution partner to bring Hirata’s globally proven equipment and tech portfolio to India. The collaboration comes at a pivotal time for India’s semiconductor ambitions, as the country accelerates efforts to build domestic manufacturing capabilities.
India’s semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem is still at an early stage of development, and reliable, globally benchmarked backend equipment and automation have remained difficult for Indian manufacturers to access, often requiring long lead times, cross-border coordination and limited local support. Hirata’s formal entry into India, through this partnership with ATS India, directly addresses this gap.
The partnership builds on an existing relationship between Hirata and ATS spanning more than a decade across other sectors, including automotive, extending that trust into the semiconductor domain. In the initial phase, Hirata’s focus in India will be on its standard product offerings, where the company sees the most immediate opportunity given the current stage of India’s semiconductor ecosystem. Through this partnership, ATS India will bring Hirata’s advanced semiconductor automation and material-handling technologies to India, including Equipment Front End Modules (EFEM), FOPLP Load Ports, PLP Panel Handling Robots, High-performance Wafer Handling Robots. These solutions enable precise, reliable and efficient wafer and panel handling across semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging processes. The EMS sector’s next phase of growth is expected to move beyond assembly-led manufacturing toward greater depth in components, engineering and higher-complexity manufacturing, precisely the segment this partnership is designed to serve, with a specific focus on semiconductor manufacturing, backend/OSAT processes, advanced packaging, and wafer and panel handling automation.
Kishen Kavikondala, CEO of ATS India said, “The focus of this partnership is on building the local commercial, technical and service ecosystem that Indian semiconductor manufacturers will need as their capacity grows over the next decade as India’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity and supporting ecosystem continue to mature. The emphasis will be on precision manufacturing solutions, before expanding into more customized, application-specific offerings as the market matures. We see significant potential in India’s equipment design capabilities, a multi-million-dollar opportunity by 2030 that ATS India is well positioned to tap into. By making Hirata’s advanced equipment locally available, semiconductor and electronics manufacturers in India will no longer need to depend on cross-border logistics or delayed technical support that have historically slowed adoption. This shift is expected to have a multiplier effect across the ecosystem enabling faster equipment deployment, reduced downtime through local servicing, and greater confidence among global and domestic manufacturers evaluating India as a semiconductor manufacturing destination.
John Derzy, Vice President, Hirata Corporation of America, said, “India represents one of the most important growth markets for Hirata as global semiconductor and electronics manufacturing continues to diversify. This partnership is not just about bringing a product or technology into India, it’s about building long-term capability. A larger goal underpinning this partnership is bringing greater automation to semiconductor manufacturing processes in India, particularly across OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) operations, which remain largely manual or semi-automated in the Indian context today. Automation is expected to be Hirata’s biggest differentiator and gamechanger offering through this partnership. Over the next two to three years, we expect this collaboration to fundamentally change how Indian manufacturers access and adopt advanced semiconductor equipment technology that has powered semiconductor ecosystems in Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other advanced manufacturing hubs.”
Beyond direct employment, the partnership will also strengthen the local supply chain ecosystem, enabling skill development in precision manufacturing. This partnership is aligned closely with the Government of India’s continued push to strengthen domestic semiconductor and EMS capabilities. The electronic manufacturing services (EMS) market in India is expected to exceed $150 billion by FY30, driven by domestic demand, policy support and China+1 strategies, from $40-45 billion in 2025. Over the next two to three years, as India’s semiconductor manufacturing base continues to scale under government-led initiatives, this partnership aims to position both companies as key enablers of that growth, supporting the broader vision of building a self-reliant, globally competitive electronics manufacturing ecosystem in India.
