SemIndia’s assembly, testing, marking and packaging (ATMP) unit in Hyderabad will become operational in

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third quarter of 2009. The plant, started in mid-2007, was to have been completed by end-2008.

Bob Kondamoori, vice-chairman of SemIndia said that the ATMP factory should be in full production in next quarter. “We will hire about 500 people in Hyderabad by end of this year,’’ he said.

The group’s other division — SemIndia Systems — has completed its second year of operations with over Rs 100 crore in revenue, up from Rs 80 crore in FY08. Despite the current challenges in the market, the company has an order book of over Rs 1,000 crore, Kondamoori said.

Meanwhile, the recessionary environment has put the fab plans of SemIndia on the backburner ‘indefinitely’, as it has not been able to get funding or a new technology partner. The company, which is proposing to set up a $3-billion fab unit in Hyderabad’s fab City, had earlier lost its technology partner AMD.

Kondamoori and former MD of the company B V Naidu had told this paper last year that the project would be delayed by until 2010-end. This postponement could now be much longer. Kondamoori said, “SemIndia has delayed the plan as the market conditions for fabs world-wide is very bad.”