Tata Electronics Loses Another Senior Leader as Head of Construction Resigns

The head of construction and facility of Tata Electronics Reda Masarwa has resigned, people aware of the developments told ET. They added that the homegrown firm has appointed Gerald Goff, a US-based advanced technology facilities design consultant to take on his role for the Rs 91,000 crore project.

Last month, ET had reported that KC Ang had resigned from his role as president and head of Tata Semiconductor Manufacturing's (TSM), marking another important leadership change. Ang's departure was confirmed by Tata Electronics.

"Reda along with some other Israeli executives that Tata Electronics had hired for the fab have resigned to go back to Israel," one person cited above said.

"Gerald Goff was appointed as the head of construction recently. He has worked with companies like Global Foundries and has extensive experience in building such facilities."

Tata Electronics, however, said it did not want to comment on 'any speculation' regarding the organisation.

"At Tata Electronics, we continually strive to strengthen our leadership capabilities by hiring domain experts to support our businesses," a Tata Electronics spokesperson said in a statement to ET.

Tata Electronics is advancing two major semiconductor projects in India, a Rs 91,000 crore wafer fabrication plant in Dholera, Gujarat and a Rs 27,000 crore semiconductor assembly and test facility in Jagiroad, Assam. The company is partnering with Taiwan's PSMC and is aiming to boost local chip manufacturing for AI, automotive, electronics and other sectors. The Dholera plant will be India's first fab.

Goff worked at Global Foundries for 12 years and left the company as director - facilities construction and infrastructure in December 2015. After that, he worked as the SVP/GM for mission critical construction for US-based IT service management firm Zones. Following this, as per his LinkedIn, he was chief consultant at Goff & Partners Consulting till May 2023 until he took on the role of VP, facilities design & construction at solar module design company CubicPV. He worked at the firm full time till February 2024 before going back to consulting.

As per his LinkedIn, Goff said he leads green field fab planning and industrial engineering projects, coordinating capacity, utilities, and layouts for confidential clients across the USA, Europe, and Asia.

"With deep expertise in facilities infrastructure and project execution, I define project scopes and deliver precise capital estimates. I have managed complex capital programs and supported facilities construction and commissioning for multiple domestic and international startups," he said.

Analysts warned that Indian conglomerates entering the semiconductor space to build fabs face a steep experience curve as building a fab is not like any other construction project.

"It involves mastering highly specialized operational blueprints of cleanroom design, tool installation to supplier ecosystem management and eventually once the fab is running yield optimization," Neil Shah, vice-president of research at Counterpoint Research told ET.

"Since domestic players currently lack this end-to-end experience from design to build to run operations, expat talent becomes pivotal."

He explained that this was happening through JVs (like Tata-PSMC), expat leadership hires or short-to-mid-term experienced consultants. However, he said retaining this talent would require a culture that can absorb global best practices while navigating the unique local regulatory and infrastructure landscape.

"The churn of expat talent after two–three years is a known risk, but has to be managed correctly," Shah said. "The local teams have to be trained well and up to speed to lead. This is at least half a decade to a decade-long commitment to patiently work through this entire cycle which makes it challenging."