Inside IPC: Connecting the Electronics Industry Worldwide Through Policy and Leadership with Sanjay Huprikar

A fascinating glimpse into the rapidly shifting landscape of global electronics manufacturing reveals dramatic contrasts between regional approaches and priorities. From India's emergence as the "poster child" for end-to-end electronics ecosystems to Europe's struggles with cohesive industrial policies, this conversation with IPC's Sanjay Huprikar, filmed on location at APEX 2025, illuminates the complex challenges and opportunities facing our industry.

India stands at the precipice of transformational growth, with major semiconductor investments, a flourishing EMS sector, and revitalized PCB fabrication capabilities potentially creating a market of a billion consumers. Meanwhile, European electronics companies face a mixed landscape – dwindling PCB manufacturers but relatively robust EMS providers, increased defense spending, but a critical missing element: "a cohesive policy around how electronics manufacturing fits in the industrial base."

The conversation highlights IPC's impact and influence across the world and Europe in particular, growing from a team of two to ten professionals driving unprecedented engagement with executives, engineers, and workforce development initiatives. European leaders are increasingly recognized within IPC, earning President's Awards and Board positions while strengthening the organization's truly global perspective. The UK's strong aerospace and defense focus has made it second only to the US in IPC certifications, demonstrating the critical importance of standards and training in high-reliability applications.

Looking forward, IPC's ambitious agenda includes aerospace-focused events with Airbus and the European Space Agency, EMS Leadership Summits in the UK and Paris, and continued advocacy for comprehensive industrial policies that integrate electronics manufacturing strategies with workforce development, regulatory frameworks, and economic initiatives. These efforts address the universal concerns we all share – from responsible AI implementation to talent development and navigating political uncertainty. As Sanjay  notes, IPC is fundamentally about "interconnection" – bringing diverse stakeholders together to solve our industry's most pressing challenges.

EMS@C-Level Live at APEX is sponsored by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Creative Electron (https://creativeelectron.com)

EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)

You can see video versions of all of the EMS@C-Level pods on our YouTube playlist.

Transcript

Introduction with Philip and Sanjay

Philip Stoten 0:08

Hello, I'm Philip Stoughton. I'm at Apex 2025. I'm on the Koyang booth and I'm joined by Sanjay Hooprakar from IPC. Sanjay, always a pleasure to chat to you. Good morning, likewise, thank you. You have this beautiful view of what's happening all around the world, and a lot of stuff's happening. It's a fast-moving world with respect to trade at the moment and that's having an impact on our industry.

India's End-to-End Electronics Journey

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 0:29

Yes, absolutely. Well, let's start with India. Yeah, so India has become, I think, the poster child for the goal of a country that's trying to do end-to-end. You've seen now the major investments that are going on in semiconductors. We know about the growth in the EMS industry. Pcb fab is beginning to come alive there. So I think that might be the model for countries to look at. If there's any country that's going to try to pull off the end-to-end, it's going to be them.

Philip Stoten 0:58

Yeah, I think it's exciting there, particularly because potentially a billion consumers you look at what happened in the last 25 years, 30 years in China they lifted like 500 million people out of poverty Exactly those people become consumers of electronic products.

European Electronics Industry Challenges

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 1:12

Now let's go to the opposite end of the spectrum and you just spoke to Allison.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 1:15

Yeah, so we know what's going on in Europe PCB companies dwindling, yeah, I think. The EMS, even though 2024 was a difficult year for you, I think they're robust, but they're robust, right, they passed the CHIPS Act, similar to the US, right? We'll see exactly how the execution and rollout of that is going to be. Defense and competitiveness are the two themes from the EU. Yeah, and I think there's an opportunity for us to play a role in that as well.

Philip Stoten 1:42

Yeah, the UK just announced their defense spending is going up. I think the Europeans are going to follow suit. Yeah, they are, but the debt ceiling's been raised, so they have the opportunity, but what's?

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 1:51

still lacking is a cohesive policy around how electronics manufacturing fits in the industrial base, and I think until that is achieved, we're going to continue to have these little bumpy roads. As Alison probably mentioned, we just released a paper on that and I think we're going to use that as probably our next big advocacy campaign to get people engaged in this process.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 2:12

We're beginning to see cracks in a good way. People are beginning to understand the value of what the rest of the ecosystem brings beyond just the chip, and there's another opportunity for us to campaign on that.

European Leadership in IPC

Philip Stoten 2:23

Yeah, and I think you know Allison mentioned that report. I think the fact that that's a data rich report is supported by really strong data, is hugely valuable to everybody in the market. It's been really nice to see some European EMSs here. It was lovely to see Zava get the recognition he deserves and get the President's Award. You have two Europeans. Let's talk Well, let's talk about those accomplishments.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 2:48

I mean that's a great segue. You mentioned Zavar winning a President's Award. Thomas Marksheffel from ASMPT also won a President's Award. We added two new Europeans to the IPC Board of Directors Marcus from Zollner and Gunther Lauber from ASMPT. Lothar Hennigan won Best Paper, so we're seeing the Europeans playing a very strong role in IPC. So we're really living that dream of hey, we want to be a global association and we want everybody around the planet who's engaged in electronics to be engaged with IPC.

Philip Stoten 3:23

and it's working out, yeah, and you're building the team there in Europe. I'm definitely having a sense that there is much more traction in Europe. Absolutely, they love what you're doing in terms of EMS leadership events. I think the industry has been crying out for that and it needs an organization like IPC to be kind of the independent focus and the pivot there, because you're able to give them the environment but you're not forcing an agenda on them.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 3:49

Yeah. So if we look back a little bit at the history, we were one or two people at most dabbling in Europe. David Bergman was really the guy who created for us, right, yeah, but he was spread thin. He was trying to do everything around the world. He was our Mr International at the time. We have brought in in the last four years we've grown the team from two people to 10 people. You've been a big part of what we've done there because you've seen it. The visibility at the trade shows getting the IPC brand out Philippe gets a lot, deserves a lot of credit. Absolutely, absolutely. As quirky as those competitions are, it draws an audience it gives, it shines the spotlight on the things we want to shine the spotlight on Workforce standards.

Philip Stoten 4:33

But what I love about that is, you know, when I look just specifically at that little activity in Electronica, you were reaching engineers, absolutely. You were reaching executives, exactly. We had leadership in the studio talking to people. Yeah, you know, you were getting every, every layer of the industry.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 4:54

And that's been our strategy. Our strategy is, while we're gaining visibility, building awareness of who we are. Simultaneously, we've been building those relationships with the executives and the influencers. And now, you see, when Alison wants to do a campaign, whereas before we were dialing for donuts, people are coming to us saying tell us how we can help. It's been a great turnaround. Team deserves a lot of credit for it.

UK Electronics and Manufacturing Policy

Philip Stoten 5:18

Yeah, absolutely. And when you look at the support that Allison's had from people like Zava and Thomas Michaels and people like that doing the work she's doing, that's hugely valuable and it shows that what you're doing is is the right thing, because the industry only follows if it's exactly.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 5:36

europeans are pretty fussy about about where they'll hitch their wagons and uh, yeah, they've definitely hitched them to the ipc, so I think that's really let me share with you just a little bit of the work we're doing in the uk as well, and we never want to forget the uk. Yeah, uh, they are they're, they're still Europe. Well, they are and they aren't, while they're Europe, they're just not, they're not.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 5:54

EU Exactly From an IPC perspective, the UK represents the second most certifications we do around the world after the US, and a big part of that is because that manufacturing is very aerospace, defense, military focused, and so it plays into the strengths of class three products, the need for standards, the need for training. Now the story and the narration fits very nicely together. I was just in the UK last week.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 6:22

You were speaking at one of our I participated in the Make UK National Manufacturers Conference and I had a very simple message for them. I was invited to talk about what we were doing for workforce yeah, but my message to them was a very 30,000-foot-view message, which is every region right now is struggling with how to incorporate electronics into an industrial policy. And until they do that and not just in a silo but how does regulatory, how does taxation, how do all those landscapes fit into the overall industrial policy? There's never going to be a cohesive strategy on workforce, talent and pipeline development.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 6:59

And so that was my message to them is what can IPC do to help you create a cohesive policy so that we can fit workforce into this in a very clean way, and I think they maybe have been a little bit shocked that an American came out and said that. On the other hand, I thought many people told me afterwards they thought it was a refreshing comment that hey, here's somebody pushing us to do a cohesive strategy and I think we'll see some gains from there. So they welcomed me and I was very pleased to be there and I think we're accomplishing a lot on behalf of the industry there.

Philip Stoten 7:30

Yeah, and I think what you're doing globally, wherever you are, it just fits so well with what the industry is demanding. I was counting the interviews we did last evening and in the first two days we did 46 46 interviews and most of those were with ems leadership. So mostly we're talking to ems guys. They're concerned. They're concerned about politics and economics and the and the variability there, an area that ipc is active in. They're concerned about talent development and how they should deal with that another area you're involved in. They're also very AI curious. They're trying to figure out where that's going. They're thinking about where are the standards going to be in this industry? Where are the safeguards and safety rails going to be?

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 8:16

We don't know who the ideal guide through that world is More work that you're doing Well more work, and then it fits into this notion that we're the Global Electronics. Association because, as you just rightfully pointed out. So many of the challenges and concerns are universal across the board. What's the responsible AI policy? How are we addressing workforce? What are tariffs going to do to our trade? These are not isolated issues. These are issues everybody's facing, so what? We can do to help create dialogue around solving those problems, that's our role as a convener, that's our role.

Upcoming IPC Events and Focus Areas

Philip Stoten 8:45

Yeah, and just in summary, you've got a really exciting agenda. You'd already decided, kind of before the latest news, that aerospace and defense was a key sector for you in Europe. You've got a really nice schedule of events coming up this year we do.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 9:02

We do so on the first half of the year. We're going to be doing an aerospace-themed IPC day in conjunction with Airbus in Toulouse in June. Early June we're discussing, based on the paper that we just released in the Commission, should we be thinking about some sort of bringing the government, the academics, the private companies together to talk more about this policy for creating an electronics manufacturing strategy and the industrial-based policy? Later in the year we're working with the European Space Agency on some of their conferences.

Philip Stoten 9:36

So this year very much feels like an aerospace security kind of theme. And you've got another EMS leadership summit in Europe.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 9:45

We'll have an EMS leadership Summit in the UK in June. We'll have an EMS Leadership Summit for Continental Europe in September in Paris and then that'll dovetail right into Productronica. So a very active and busy year coming up.

Philip Stoten 9:57

Yeah, it's exciting, isn't it? And you're doing a great job there. And what I actually love is it's not just the work you're doing there. It doesn't feel like it's isolated.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 10:05

It feels like all these parts are connected and they have so much value to have when it comes up to IPC level and you're sharing vision.

Philip Stoten 10:16

Yeah, we're about interconnection, so it seems to be a good theme for us, absolutely, absolutely Well, stay connected.

Sanjay Huprikar, President, Europe and South Asia Operations at IPC 10:22

Thank you very much. Thanks for talking to me. Great seeing you this week.