G Rajeswaran, formerly of Eastman Kodak, is attempting to kickstart OLED manufacturing in India. Rajeswaran is working with the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras on the INR5 billion ($72.2 million) project. The partners are developing ideas for a project to manufacture OLED screens at a low cost.
If approved and funded by the government, the project could develop processes that could be used by companies to set up manufacturing facilities for less than INR10 billion ($156.4 million). Engineers at IIT Madras are working on a colour patterning technology that is ‘extremely fast’ to manufacture. They are also attempting to replace the glass substrate with silicon.
Analyst Comment
We attended a very interesting talk from ‘Raj’ at the Latin Display event in Brazil in November (OLED Basics From a Pioneer). At the time, he was talking about a potential breakthrough for OLED manufacturing that would get away from the losses of colour filters, but also the limitations of the shadow mask technology that Samsung is using.
India has not had much business in displays since the CRT times. At one point, Videocon of India, which had bought the Thomson CRT business (and PDP development business), had a plan to build a G6 LCD plant in Italy, but that was thwarted by issues in the banks (among other things) and it also was talking about an LCD plant in Mumbai. That project didn’t happen either. (BR)
