Delivering the keynote, Jaswinder Ahuja, corporate vice president and managing director, Cadence Design Systems India, said: “There is a “real” but “different” opportunity in the emerging markets. One would have to immerse himself/herself to understand the market better. India is a great proxy for the emerging markets. It also has the design expertise to address this market.“The next 10-15 years present a unique window of opportunity to India entrepreneurs to play a leadership role in the global economic growth.”
Elaborating on the “real” but “different” opportunity in emerging markets, he added: “The base of the pyramid opportunity is very real. As per World Resources Institute, there are four billion people in the developing world representing a $5 trillion market opportunity who have real needs and aspirations but are under served.
“At least 700 million of these people are in India and represent a real business opportunity as well as an opportunity to “do good” and help include them into the formal economy and enable India to achieve its aspiration of 9-10 percent “inclusive” GDP growth. This requires business innovation and a different mind-set presenting a transformative opportunity to marry low cost, good quality, sustainability and profitability at the same time.”
India a great proxy for emerging markets!
India is also said to be a great proxy for the emerging markets. Ahuja explained: “India is many markets — urban, semi-urban and rural) in one and presents a broad spectrum of challenges that need to be overcome to be able to reach the 700 million people market opportunity.”
“If we can make something (product or service) work in India, we can make it work pretty much anywhere else in the developing world – whether it is financing, distribution, logistics, operating environment or anything else.”
Opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs to play leadership role
The next 10-15 years present a unique window of opportunity to India entrepreneurs to play a leadership role in the global economic growth.
According to Ahuja: “The markets of the future are in our backyard and we have among the best design talent in the world. If we can immerse ourselves in the market to understand the real needs and opportunities and then leverage our design expertise to build products for this market we will be best positioned to serve the next 4 billion consumers of the world.
“Indian entrepreneurs have an opportunity to play a leadership role in the global economic growth across sectors, but especially in electronics. No other country in the world has this unique convergence of circumstances. This opportunity is once in a lifetime and ours to lose if we do not create the right environment and framework to leverage it.”
Growth drivers
Ahuja also outlined the R&D opportunities that the VLSI community in India can seize. India has come a long way in the area of VLSI design and has established itself as a hub of design activity.
According to him, some of the growth drivers could be 4G phones, smart grid power, medical electronics as well as emerging markets.
The various application opportunities for India and ‘like markets’ include connecting millions who lack wired communications, efficient management of energy usage, adopting distance learing to educate remote population and making use of medical electronics to improve health.
R&D opportunities for India
Ahuja focused on R&D opportunities that have been thrown open to Indian electronic designers and manufacturers as India stands at the threshold of unprecedented economic growth.
He said: “India has transformed into an electronic design hub. Now is the time to innovate and seize the opportunities in domains such as smart phones, smart grid, medical, and the emerging India-specific markets. Indian products are cost and power-sensitive. They must be more robust to work for Indian conditions. These requirements open up design challenges for Indian electronic industry.
“For the Indian market, the equation is not Price = Cost + Profit. We have to rewrite the equation as Profit = Price – Cost. The Tata Nano fixed the price at Rs 1 lakh and worked backwards to reduce the cost. We have to draw a lesson from the Tata Nano when we design electronic products for the Indian market.”
Ahuja illustrated a number of examples where Indians have come up with innovative solutions. “Let us take a lesson from the Shampoo industry who came up with the innovation of the sachet to reach a much larger market at the bottom of the pyramid.”
EDA opportunites and electronics design
Hasmukh Ranjan delivered a keynote talk on “Cloud Computing – Opportunities for EDA.” He explained the importance of cloud computing for VLSI design companies. Companies can get access to unlimited amount of computing resources through cloud computing without making a significant capital expense. A number of EDA companies are making available software as well as IP to design companies through the cloud. There are many R&D challenges to be conquered in the area of Cloud Computing, such as security and multi-vendor flows.
Prof. Anshul Kumar gave a keynote talk on the topic of ‘Harnessing the power of multicores.”
A panel discussion was held on the topic “Electronic design for the Indian market – Challenges and Opportunities,” which was moderated by Dr. C.P. Ravikumar. The panelists included Prof. M. Balakrishnan of IIT Delhi, Saugat Sen of Cadence Design Systems, and Aninda Roy of Intel. The panelists presented their views on what they feel is a killer product for the Indian market and what differentiates product design for the Indian market from product design for the American and European markets.
Finally, thanks a lot to Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, secretary, VLSI Society of India, and technical director, University Relations, Texas Instruments India, for his valuable inputs, and for always keeping me in the loop regarding VLSI related activities in India, as well as to the VSI Secretariat for its inputs regarding VDAT 2010.
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