INDIA Cadence vFINAL DR 17/6/08 09:16 Page 31
Semiconductor India
Design start ups in India
Indian electronic design start ups driving high tech
innovation. By Rahul Arya, Marketing Director,
Cadence Design Systems (I) Pvt Ltd
Innovation happens when a bright mind
sees an unserved need, identifies a market
and finds a sponsor for his or her journey.
Historically start ups have pioneered
innovation and the semiconductor industry
is no different.
By the 1970’s engineers and designers
based in Silicon Valley had gained enough
experience in the semiconductor industry
and had the confidence to strike out on their
own. As a consequence of there actions,
there was a rise of venture capital firms to
fund the start up companies that developed.
Even today, the Silicon Valley in California,
leads the venture capital funding, although
semiconductor start ups are now spreading
to other geographic regions as the industry
sees disaggregation.
Background
Over the years, the semiconductor industry
was dominated primarily by First World
regions; North America, Europe and Japan.
Some of the key factors for this were access
to and size of local markets, and availability Design is becoming a critical differentiator Israel is a good example of the development
of skill sets. today. High performance, low power, low of fabless start ups. A well developed
Since the economic downturn in the early cost and yet shorter design cycles. These are ecosystem of VC’s and design partners
part of the millennium, start up activities key semiconductor design challenges. (EDA and IP companies) support
mushroomed around the world. Most of the entrepreneurs interested in setting up a
activity was in the fabless space, with Hence, apart from pure semiconductor fabless start up.
manufacturing outsourced to third party startups, the industry has witnessed an
fabs. This was in part due to the high costs increased level of activity in the design Trends in India
of setting up a fab, as well as economies of ecosystem, EDA, IP and design services The Indian electronic design ecosystem
scale that third party fabs provide. companies. owes its growth to MNC’s which initially
Summer 2008 | www.semiconductor-india.com 31
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