Chai & Chips Episode 007: Startup at 68? An Indian Serial Chip Founder’s Next Chapter
Guest: Raja Manickam - Founder, Tessolve & iVP Semi
Episode Summary:
What does it take to build a semiconductor company from the ground up, not once but multiple times? What are the hard-won lessons from navigating India’s evolving ecosystem, from the early 2000s to today?
In this episode of Chai & Chips, I sit down with Raja Manickam, a true pioneer of the Indian semiconductor industry. As the founder of Tessolve, one of India’s most successful design and test services companies, and the new founder of iVP Semi at age 68, Raja offers a rare and candid look into his multi-decade journey. He unpacks the real-world challenges of capital, policy, and global competition while sharing his people-first leadership philosophy.
This is a must-listen for anyone building, investing in, or curious about the future of deep tech in India, providing a masterclass in resilience, long-term vision, and purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
YouTube episode link:
Key Insights & Takeaways
1. The “Semiconductor Drug”: Passion as the Ultimate Fuel
Raja describes the semiconductor industry as a “drug” – once you’re in, the intellectual challenge and tangible impact are so addictive that it’s hard to leave. This passion is the core of his longevity and his decision to start a new venture at 68. He believes true entrepreneurship is about enjoying the process of creation, a drive that transcends age and financial motivation.
2. The Strategic Pivot: Why India Must Shift from Services to Products
While acknowledging the success of the services model he pioneered with Tessolve, Raja argues that India’s future lies in productization. He identifies a critical global shift: the fracturing of the optimized supply chain into three distinct blocs—US, China, and the “Rest of the World.” This creates a unique opportunity for India to step up as a leader in the third bloc, not just as a service provider but as a product nation that creates its own demand.
3. The Founder’s Burden: The Art of Making the Tough Call
Leadership, for Raja, is about taking responsibility and making decisive calls, even with incomplete information or against the consensus. He stresses that in a startup, you cannot wait for 100% data. A leader must have the courage to make a decision, own it, and rally the team, even when they disagree. This decisiveness, combined with transparency, builds trust and respect.
4. Leadership is a People-First Endeavor
Raja’s leadership philosophy is rooted in empathy and treating employees like family. He shares how Tessolve’s success was built on hiring talent from small towns and investing in them. He believes that emotional bonding and genuine care for people’s well-being create a level of loyalty and commitment that objective, transaction-based management can never achieve. As his wife jokes, “People don’t work for you, you work for them.”
5. Building for India’s Real Problems: The Case for Frugal Innovation
Raja critiques the tendency to adopt expensive, Western-centric solutions for Indian problems. Using the powerful “driverless car” analogy (India already has “driverless” cars operated by drivers), he argues that India’s strength lies in frugal, practical innovation. The focus should be on solving real-world challenges like power efficiency, agriculture, and water management with cost-effective solutions designed for the masses, not just the top 10%.
6. A Call to Action for Policymakers and Corporate India
Raja believes India’s true potential lies in its “geniuses in the rough”—the passionate, undiscovered innovators in startups and universities. He urges policymakers to shift their focus from funding only large corporations to empowering these smaller, agile players. He calls on corporate giants to “adopt” startups, providing mentorship and market access. This collaborative ecosystem, he argues, is the only way to ensure India becomes a true leader, not just a follower, in the global semiconductor landscape.
Connect with our Guest:
iVP Semi: https://www.ivpsemi.com/index.html
Raja Manickam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manickamworldt2/
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Episode transcripts on Substack: https://www.prakashmallya.com/s/chai-and-chips-podcast
Episode transcripts on Medium: https://medium.com/@pmallya2411
Episode Transcript
Speakers:
Prakash Mallya (Host)
Raja Manickam (Guest)
Intro Music and Preview: [00:00:00-00:01:29]
Prakash Mallya: [01:30] Hi, welcome to Chai & Chips. This is Prakash Mallya. Today we have with us, Raja Manickam. Raja frankly, does not need any introduction because he has contributed so much to the Indian semiconductor and the global semiconductor industry for a very long period of time. He founded Tessolve in 2003 in India. It was headquartered and continues to be headquartered in Bengaluru, and it passed thousand crore revenue recently, making it one of the biggest in India in test and design services and one of the successful companies in semiconductor solutions. He didn’t stop there. He founded at the age of, believe you me, 68 in 2024, IVP Semi, which is focused on building semiconductor products, reducing the development or design lifecycle, as well as increasing the strategic autonomy for the country. So, he is one person who has seen the entire spectrum of the semiconductor industry for over a couple of decades and has contributed significantly to it.
[02:36] So, Raja, welcome to Chai & Chips. You are an inspiration and I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
Raja Manickam: [02:44] Thank you, Prakash. It’s a pleasure. And I, like you said, right, you know, age is, you know, I don’t really bother about so much about it because you enjoy what you do. And you know, semiconductor is like a drug, right? Once you get on this drug, you can’t get out of it. So it’s a good drug to have.
Prakash: [03:03] Yes. Yes. I can vouch for it. Yes, having spent time in the industry, it is a cool industry to be in.
Raja: [03:09] Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.
Prakash: [03:12] So you started your career with multinational like Texas...
Raja: [03:16] Yes.
Prakash: [03:16] ...National Semi, you’ve done startups after that, you’ve founded startups. At what point in time did it really strike you to build semiconductor or contribute to the semiconductor ecosystem in India?
Raja: [03:29] I mean, one was, you know, I always wanted to come back to India, right? That pull for me was very strong. But like most people, right, you go to the US, you’re stuck there and then you wait for the kids to go to college and then you make a move, right? So I wasn’t any different. But if I had not made the move, right, at that point, I would have been stuck, right? It’s like you got to get off that, that superhighway if you may, right?
[03:54] So I always wanted to come to India. My wife is also from India and so, you know, and she’s very passionate about, you know, she does a lot of things on the education side. Okay? So as, as a couple, right, you know, it always has to be a couple. If one, you know, if the other doesn’t like it, yeah, it doesn’t happen. So I think both of us were very, you know, wanting to come back to India, do a lot of things in India.
[04:15] The other thing was when it’s basically on semiconductor, most of the Indian diaspora are designers and so on, right? So there’s, you know, in the western side. But fortunately for me, I started, in the manufacturing, in a factory in TI in Singapore. That’s my first job. So I worked my way up from being, you know, from the bottom of semiconductor segment in that manufacturing and then move all the way up, right? So I was very comfortable with, you know, Asia and factories and all those kind of things.
[04:45] And I felt that India lost out, right? Because I, I worked in Malaysia, I worked in Singapore, I actually worked in the factories, right? I’m not just visiting factories. And I saw that, you know, we have so much talent, so much people and, you know, smart people and so forth. But yet, you know, we couldn’t pull the manufacturing, I’m talking about the nineties, right? So I thought we missed the boat. So I was always trying to figure out, you know, how you bring this back, bring this back.
[05:10] And 2004, in fact, before I started Tessolve, actually, I wanted to start it as a manufacturing company. Okay? Believe it or not, right? I had a manufacturing plan, I had an OSAT plan, you know, 2003. But of course, right, you know, I couldn’t get any funding and so on and everybody said, hey, you know, there’s a service industry, maybe you want to try. And, you know, and I mean, I couldn’t get for that either from a funding standpoint, but at least it was a proven model in India.
[05:36] So that’s how I ended up starting, you know. But the pull to come to India, you know, the, the calibre because I also worked with a lot of, part of my National Semiconductor house with, on telecom. Okay? So I used to run the telecom P&L. So I actually visited C-DOT many times those days in the mid-nineties, 93, 94, 95 timeframe.
[06:00] I worked with a lot of young engineers in Bangalore and Delhi. And I said, man, these guys are so smart, right? But yet, you know, we didn’t get a, you know, place at the table. So all of this put together, you know, it was like, hey, I got to do this.
Prakash: [06:16] Fantastic. So you started as manufacturing, pivoted to design services because you couldn’t get funding. And now you are into productization with IVP Semi. What made you change or what drove the mindset shift saying now is the timing to go into products versus doing services?
Raja: [06:38] I think, you know, I think there’s always services, business will be there and I think it’s going to grow, right? Tessolve, I think last year they did about 1,300 or 1,400 crore. And I think lately you saw, you know, TPG picked up a 25% stake for, I think, $550 million enterprise value, right?
[07:01] Uh, so I think that business will grow. But my view is, hey, you know, the timing is good, you know, there are going to be three distinct supply chains that’s evolving. One is the American supply chain. Another one is the Chinese supply chain and the rest of the world, right?
[07:21] So it’s no more that optimized thing that we used to know, right? You know, global supply chain or something was probably the most optimized supply chain. So now it’s going to be, you know, pretty much three different supply chains independent of each other. And I think the rest of the world’s supply chain is where I think India is going to take a lead, right? You know, we’re a big nation, we have a big market. And the timing is good now with all the geopolitical issues and all that.
[07:51] And you know, I think the government, you know, central government, you know, Prime Minister came two days in for the semicon show and all, right? So the intent, you know, they’re making a statement, right? So all of that put together, right, I believe that, you know, we need to be a product nation because there’s an opportunity to build products that will fulfill this supply chain.
[08:12] So, and then the other thing is, you know, government has put a lot of money, you know, since last February into manufacturing, right? The fab coming up with Tata, the OSATs and all that. Who’s going to fill up all this? Right? Where is the demand going to come from? Right? And so we are going to be the demand creators, right? In fact, I work with the central government on this. So there’s going to be a lot more money going into demand creation. And demand creation is products, right?
[08:41] Then the question is which products, right? And so I think, you know, you peel the onion and you’ll get to where, where it is. All said and done, right, you know, product is a lot more fun, right? I used to have a slide to show where is the money in the semiconductor, right? You know, is it in the fab, in the OSAT, or is it in EDA tools, or is it in equipment? Where it is, right? And the product guys pick up everything. They don’t own anything, right? But you know, they make the most amount of money, right? So the product guys figured out how to make use of all of this without owning anything, right? And making the most amount of money. Yeah. Right?
[09:15] So we’re smart people, okay? We do it in other countries, sure, right? So I think, you know, product is, one is, you know, I think we need it. Secondly, I think, you know, it’s the right thing to do from a business standpoint as well. The final thing from a socialist angle, I’m kind of a socialist person, is that the Western solution is an expensive solution. It has to be an expensive solution, right?
[09:45] One is because, you know, they want to make those big margins and so forth. Second thing is, it’s solutions for the Western requirements, right? One example I always give is this driverless cars and all that, right? That’s a very key thing for all the Western countries, right? Because they, you know, they don’t have drivers. I already have a driverless car. I don’t drive my car, right? Somebody else drives my car. He parks it and I call him, you know, he’s there.
[10:13] In fact, you know, I can trust him more than anything else, right? About 20,000, 30,000 rupees, I have a driverless car, right? So that’s not our issue, right? Whereas if I go to every, you know, service company, you know, in this space, in India, they will say, you know, I have IP for driverless cars or something like that. So we’re working on the wrong solution in my opinion, right?
[10:35] So I think, you know, there’s a set of real problem that we need to solve, whether it’s climate warming or water or you know, quality of life or anything. Practical solutions, cost-effective solutions, that that really needs to be implemented and that will come from India. By culture, we’re frugal in the sense, but we’re also very society-minded, community people, right?
[11:05] So I think, you know, solutions that come from India will be a lot more is what the globe needs in the next 10, 20 years and will be completely different from what the western thought process is.
Prakash: [11:17] That’s a comprehensive solution. And we can dig into each of those elements during this conversation, right? The first part of that you mentioned was the kind of breakup of the supply chain. The US supply chain, China supply chain, and rest of world supply chain. Be great to get your colour on what has driven that breakup?
Raja: [11:41] I think, you know, I mean, the elephants are fighting, right? You know, I don’t want to mention names, but you know what it is. So we’re the, we’re caught in between, right? So there’s a lot of small nations and all that, right? You know, do you trust this guy or trust this guy? You know, one guy from a security reason, another guy from his own reasons. So, I think there is a lot of reasons why the trust level between countries have become, eroded, right?
[12:09] Could be protectionism or whatever it is, right? And then security reasons, right? I mean, who would have thought that in the year 2025, there’ll be a war going on, right? It’s just mindless to me. Why would somebody go to war now, right? But I think that pivoting of this, gives an opportunity where it’s not going to be like people thought that China is going to be the factory of the world, right?
[12:40] I always believe that after a while, you know, a certain size you become, you start to drop off, right? You cannot keep on becoming a monopoly, right? I mean, today is NVIDIA, right? A few years ago it was Intel. I mean, Intel was so huge in microprocessors that they had to fund AMD to stay them alive so they don’t look like a monopoly, right? So today, you know the story about Intel, right? So I think, like any other thing, right? So it always, it has to be distributed.
[13:10] I’m a big believer in distributed everything. And so this mega-scaling and creating this, whether it’s a fab and all those things, I think eventually, I’m a big believer that it’ll become more community-based, smaller, regional, according to the needs of it and what the people there can, can do and so on. So, I think there is going to be a lot more of that.
[13:36] And there are a lot of smaller companies that look at India as a more trustworthy partner in the sense, because we’ve always been very neutral, right? I think Indians in general are, I’ve done business with many different people, are quite trustworthy, right? You know, we don’t covet for other people’s IP in the sense, right? A very little of that, right? So I think there’s a lot of trust.
[14:06] And apart from China and the US, there’s a huge market. I mean, we probably be the biggest market, right? And EU, I don’t think they can stand by themselves. So they have to align with somebody. With all this happening, I think they’re better off aligning with us than the Western countries.
Prakash: [14:24] And the other part that was embedded in your earlier response was the talent. And you felt the talent is such high caliber in India and I completely agree. 20% of the designers of chips have always come from India. But that being said, a large part of them, though they want to go do semiconductors or deep tech, still end up in software. So what is your view on how do we make chip building or semiconductors more aspirational for young people?
Raja: [14:55] Yeah, I think when I started my career, from college there was a lot of tinkering going on, right? In the hostels, we used to, you know, guys who’s got ham radios and we used to build stuff like that, right? So there’s a lot of tinkering, right? And you know, with the light comes on, right, we’re like, oh, you know, how did that happen? So I think in the last probably 10, 15 years or maybe 20 years, it has gone more to coding and, you know, software and people like, you know, it works, doing something, but how it works and all that, right? I think the fundamentals were kind of not that emphasized and so on.
[15:37] So I had a meeting with, we’re doing something with IIT Madras, right? They’ve created this kit where you can do some basic experiments on current and power and all that. It’s like a kit they’ve designed. And when I take it to my hometown, my village, you know, and there’s, we started with eighth grade, ninth grade. They actually, you know, send some sine waves and see some square waves coming on the other side and actually see it, right? It’s so exciting. I mean, these are kids, you know, I’m talking about, tier two, tier three, small town, right? Small town.
[16:14] And I could see that they become more curious. So I think, you know, one part of it is, we need to create that curiousness in in people, right? Rather than just doing the coding part of it. I still remember the story when I, when I was in IIT Kharagpur, we had ECE, but we didn’t have computer science. So I think my second or my third year, computer science was introduced, right?
[16:45] So there was an option for us to switch to computer science, right? So half the class actually switched. But I, I went to my prof, right? I said, hey, you know, I’m so curious, I want to do this, right? Because of something new. You know what he said? He said, Raja, you’re a smart guy, okay? You like to look at electrons and stuff like that, right? Why are you going to this stupid people? You know, they just write something and coding. So I mean it was, you know, that was his advice, right? This was for not for too smart people.
[17:17] But of course, the guys who went there, they went and joined Microsoft after graduation, they’re all multimillionaires. And I’m still, you know, looking at signals. So, a different story. But I think this curiosity needs to get implemented at a very basic level. And by nature, we are curious, right? Indians, we are very curious people, right? Uh, and we, you know, our parents, grandparents, they all taught us, all the historic stories and all that. So I think we will get there very quickly. We just need to do some work at an educational level. And, you know, we’ll be a force to beat.
Prakash: [17:57] Cheers to that. Yeah. So, switching gears a bit. A large part of any organization, especially startups, is about leadership, right? And what I really wanted to understand from you is your leadership philosophy. So maybe we could start with during your career, the kind of pivotal moment or a failure that you faced early on, which really shaped your thinking on leadership.
Raja: [18:25] Yeah, I think, fortunately I started with TI, right? TI, opened up all their, you know, knowledge to us, right? If you’re curious, sky’s the limit, right? Even for a young engineer, right? You know, although I was, I started as a test engineer and I was allowed to do SPICE modeling, right? Which has got nothing to do with test, right? But it was just after 6 p.m., you know, we had some, you know, really gurus in SPICE modeling. So we’ll sit with, you know, sit with him and doing. So they exposed that, right?
[18:56] So I think, exposure, you know, to these kind of things was a very, very good thing, you know, that I learned a lot from there, right? What you do outside of your work, right, mattered a lot. And there was no fear, right, at that time, right? But I saw over time, right, you know, the management style started to change. And people, you know, it was wasn’t about, people were talking about, oh no, employees are there, it’s a people company and all. But really, you know, practice, it was not, right? The layoffs happening. I was, you know, very depressed whenever every time, even though I’ve never been laid off myself, but I always was, why get people get laid off and all that. Usually, a lot of times my boss get laid off, I don’t know why.
[19:53] So, I felt that, you know, the whole empathy for people, people were not in the equation at all, right? Especially with the American style, right? And more and more, right, if you look at all that MBAs that we are minting today and a lot of them are Indians, right? They become more and more of a spreadsheet, you know, so there’s no value in the sense in all of this equation, right? You know, what is the people part of it, right?
[20:21] So I think, you know, that was something that I said, look, great companies exist because of great people.
Prakash: [20:29] No question.
Raja: [20:30] And you can say that, but then, how do you make, you really are, you know, have them work in a mindset where we’re all working together to build this, right? If you are like, a gun for hire, you know, you come, you know, I need you for this and then I, you know, you’re done, you know, you’re gone, right?
[20:53] So that’s a different business model, maybe it works, maybe it works for Broadcom.
Prakash: [20:57] Yeah.
Raja: [20:58] But for me, right, you know, I, I came from a school of thought of, you know, right from my young age, right? That you should be inclusive, you know. So I was the first grandson in my family. My grandfather was like, you know, you got to carry my name and, you know, you got to take care of all these people, might like you, don’t like you, but you got to guide them and all that. So I think I had that, you know, the family kind of attitude, right? My relationship was always like that. And I always felt that in India, especially, the emotional bonding is more important than your objective bonding, if you may, right? You know, in the US is like, you know, you’ve met all these goals, we give you this money, right? Here you know, if you are emotionally bonded to them, they will go all out to, you know, do things beyond, you know, what you expect them, right? So I think the management style in India, although I was trained in the US most of my life, I was quite successful in, you know, building, I mean, you could, you could talk to people who worked for me. And my wife always kids with me, she says, people don’t work for you, you work for them.
Prakash: [22:07] Which is such a great mindset to have as a leader.
Raja: [22:09] So, I enjoy that. I enjoy that. So, so I think, you know, that is one of the things that from a failure, I saw that, you know, some of the Western companies were kind of going down. And whereas I felt that, you know, this was something that, we need to pivot to, right? To go back to the, you know, glory, if you may, right? You know, HP was something like that, right? The founders of HP, right?
Prakash: [22:34] Right, right. Yeah, such a great thought and from everything I’ve read and listened or watched about you, what strikes me the most is your leadership, right, your style. You come across as very thoughtful and some of the things that you have implemented, like you treat employees as your family. You have, in Tessolve, hired from small towns, trained them to really be excellent at what they do. As a leader, you have felt making decisions is very important as a leader and then as a startup, day one itself, running a professional organization, having clear accounting is very important. So these are all not really found all the time. So what shaped your thinking in these aspects on how to think about it and where do you feel you stand in terms of leadership in startups? And what advice would you have?
Raja: [23:33] So, so let me go through, you know, in the reverse direction what you saw, right? See having, running a startup as a corporate, right, with a corporate, you know, compliance and all those things, it was very important because I saw a lot of great startups, but because the accounting was not good or, you know, how they had managed, you know, how the moving around people and finance and all that, uh, they couldn’t get funding. Right? Not because, you know, they had a great product, they had good stuff, but because it wasn’t compliant in some ways, you know, the moment you approach, you know, any funding, whether it’s a VC or private equity, they look at it, you know, and they, if they see even a little bit of, they’re not, you know, happy about in terms of compliance, right, they back off, right? So, you know, you shut yourself off, right? So I think that was one thing very, very important. I said, hey, you know, compliance and all. So it’s always a corporate.
[24:25] And fortunate because I learned from TI. True. TI was one of the best companies, you know to start with for a young engineer. There was a lot of exposure, but at the same time, right, you know, they were very, very compliant on everything, right? They did. So that part of it was, you know, was a very important part that I know any startup, I would recommend, right? Because you tend to say, okay, you know, we’ll take care of it when we are bigger and so on. But when you’re small, you feel lay down these things, right? It’s easier to do it, right? When you’re small, right? So I was always, you know, compliant especially on the accounting side and finance side and so on.
[25:00] And then when you bring the people in, right? You know, again, right? You know, you want to see people that can question you, but at the same time, right? You know, some alignment with the, you know, with the thought process of the founders. Right? I think that is also very, very key in, you know...
Prakash: [25:23] Alignment to the mission.
Raja: [25:24] Alignment to the mission more than, you know, a personal thing, right? And we, you know, we ran into a lot of times, right? You know there, and I always say, you know, any company is a dictatorship, right? And, you know, we may all, and I’m very, very open to, you know, discussion and all that. In fact, I get, I walk down to, you know, every level and, you know, get inputs and so on, right? I used to have lunch with everybody, pull them together and make them easy and all that and ask them some very controversial questions so that, you know, sometimes put them... uneasy in that sense.
[25:58] But then, you know, finally you have to make a call, right?
Prakash: [26:05] Yeah, you have to make a decision.
Raja: [26:06] And you have to make a decision, right? Even you’ve only about 30% data if you may, right? Don’t deal, you know, do this data paralysis, right? More data, more data. I’m a very impatient guy in this sense. By the way, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, okay? It’s not that, you know, every decision I made is, you know, fortunate for me that I survived all those things, okay? But I think, you know, the leader must make the call, must make the decision, right? Don’t procrastinate on that.
[26:34] And, you know, people will respect you for that, right? Now, some of them within the organization may not like that decision, but you put them to, you know, make them feel easy, look, you know, there’s a bigger picture behind this. You don’t know what you’re doing, I don’t know what I’m doing, but, you know, you put me in that place. Yeah. Right? I think, you know, Infosys is a classic example, right? You got eight or nine founders. But Narayana Murthy was a guy, right? You know, finally said, okay, you know, and the guys who didn’t agree, you know, they left.
[27:04] So I think, you know, the decision-making is very, very critical. And, you know, people, once you make a call, everybody falls in place, right? So we have made a lot of decision in Tessolve where I was the only guy who felt that, you know, I should do it when the entire company, all my management said, don’t do it, including my investors. But I still did it. Okay? Right? In fact, one instance the investor told me, Raja, you’re holding a gun to, to our heads. Right? I said, look, you know, I don’t want to fire it, but, you know, I know more about the company than you do. Okay? And so, I’ll make the call, you know, you tell me why, you know, it’s all that, I’ll listen to you, but I want to make the call.
[27:50] So you must be bold enough to do that and be, you know, accept the consequence of it as well, right? So I think some boldness need to be there and believe. And people respect that.
Prakash: [28:04] And you, even if people don’t agree with you, my observation has been, if you can explain as to why you made the decision you made, most people will understand.
Raja: [28:14] Absolutely.
Prakash: [28:15] And then, I think the objective for everyone is to fall in line, like you said. Towards the mission.
Raja: [28:20] Yeah. I think mostly, right, I mean, people are very logical and so forth, right? It’s just that sometimes they’re so logical, they want perfect answers for that, right? And in the space that we are playing in a startups or, you know, you got to just believe that, hey, you know, some, something is five, 10 years from now, right? This morning I was in an investor call from, you know, Hong Kong, right? You know, some big investors want to, you know, come into semiconductor, trying to create this big fund, you know, that, that even government can become an LP in that.
[28:55] And so, you know, so the guy was talking, talking, talking and then I said, look, you know, what do you think, right? 10 years from now, how India will look, you know, the semiconductor, right? And, you know, he didn’t, I mean, he’s an investor, he’s, you know, a long, supposedly a long-term investor, but they did not have that, right? So I had to explain to them, you know, this is what I see, right?
[29:18] There’s going to be at least two companies, semiconductor companies, which will be in the top 10 in 10 years. Okay? It’s going to happen, okay? Then there’s going to be at least another 10 companies which will be in a billion-dollar sales, right? In 10 years, right? And is that going to happen? You know, it’s an aspirational thing. But I think it was going to happen, right? And this, you know, you put all of these things together, I think it will happen. So, if they, and then you go into a lot more details to explain why you think it is, you know, so then, you know, then the consensus comes about, right? And some people say, look, you know, I’m not comfortable making those calls, but you are and, you know...
Prakash: [30:00] Over to you.
Raja: [30:01] Over to you.
Prakash: [30:02] Yes. Yes. So that’s a good break to get into a bit of lightning round. So, maybe, uh, it might give a sneak preview into what Raja is outside of work. Okay, so are you ready for it, Raja?
Raja: [30:20] Sure. Absolutely.
Prakash: [30:22] So the first question is, which piece of everyday Indian life would you like to be chipped? From street vendors to cricket balls, just to prove a point about innovation potential.
Raja: [30:35] You know, one of the things, right, you know, all these IPL and all these, right? There was a time when Chennai teams were, I think was banned or something for some reason.
Prakash: [30:47] Yes, for a year or so. Yeah.
Raja: [30:48] And I make it a point to go to at least one match, okay? I usually Chennai. And then, you know, even though the matches was not going on and, you know, Chennai was not even participating, but these all these vendors were still selling, right? The same dates, right? You know, somewhere else is going on. So you just buy, you know, passing by the stadium and they were selling this things, right? And there were people buying it, right? So of course, Dhoni and all that was still lying. And I was thinking, man, that is really, you know, hardcore believe that they can sell this, right? I know some 20, 30 rupees or whatever, right? So I think, you know, I mean, to some extent, I think, you know, Indians in, you know, I don’t know whether it’s because of the movies or Hollywood or whatever, right? We live in fantasy land for a while. Right? And I think it’s a good thing in my opinion, right? It makes us lighter.
Prakash: [31:41] Yes.
Raja: [31:41] Indians in general are very happy, even though they may not have too many things, much, you know. But we are happy people in this sense, right? So that’s something that, you know, I really enjoy when I’m walking around seeing people, they don’t have much but they’re happy.
Prakash: [31:55] Very nice. Very nice. So what’s the most unusual analogy you have ever used to explain a semiconductor concept to someone?
Raja: [32:03] I mean one of the things, you know, like, my mother, okay, she’s, I mean one of the reasons, just now you brought up, you know, why I’m a first-time graduate in my family, right? So we’d been, we don’t have that background, right? So my mother was, you know, probably, I really don’t know, but probably she’s fifth standard or something like that, right? And so when I got this, you know, ECE and so on, right? So I’m trying to explain to her, right? What I do, right? And she’s very, you know, difficult to for her to figure out, right?
[32:40] And I don’t want to say electrical. So I said, hey, you know, see that the plane going up there, right? And it, you know, somebody is talking to the plane, right? You know, that’s what I do, right? The electronics and, you know, RF and all. I mean, couldn’t explain to her is, so, I said, you know, somebody is talking to that plane, right? That’s the kind of work that, you know, I want to do and this is what I’m studying for. So that electronics and communications is one of the things that I explained.
Prakash: [33:07] Very cool. Very, very cool. So complete this sentence. The strangest place I have ever found inspiration for a semiconductor idea was...
Raja: [33:17] Strangest place. I don’t know whether it’s the strangest place, but, you know, sometime when I go into this museums, right? And I’m, and my wife is also a history graduate. I like museums. I’m a big believer in history. Yes, right? That somebody has done it and, you know, how, how you progress into it. So I’ve seen, you know, some of those ideas that has happened, you know, many, many years ago with very little knowledge about a lot of these things. And that I find it very, you know, inspirational, right? I mean with nothing, right, you know, or, you know, how did they manage to figure this out? Right? Whether it’s astronomy or wherever it is, right?
[34:07] And so, okay, I think one maybe, you know, incident is, I’m very fascinated by planes for example, right? It’s a huge, right? Yeah. So many tons, right? How can they fly like that, right? You know? And you know, there’s always fascinates me, right? So everything about this, you know, flying and, you know, all of these things, you know, always, it’s a huge inspiration for me, right? And saying that, I mean, people can lift this thing, right? And, you know, and flying nonstop for, you know, that’s a marvel, right?
Prakash: [34:44] True.
Raja: [34:44] So I, you know, all these kind of things really inspires me. And I’m also a big believer that technology has a solution to everything, right? It’s only question of whether we accept it. So yeah.
Prakash: [34:59] Super. So you have to explain what you do at IVP to a five-year-old using only kitchen analogies. How would you do that?
Raja: [35:11] Yeah. I, I have a five-year-old grandson.
Prakash: [35:13] Oh yeah?
Raja: [35:14] I have three grandkids, but the youngest one is five.
Prakash: [35:17] Okay.
Raja: [35:17] So it kind of matches that. I would say, you know, he actually asked, asked me quite some times. So I’ll say, okay, take this microwave, okay? He knows that, you know to heat up something, right? You know, you got to put it in the stove or, you know, there’s a fire and so on, right? But here, you know, take this milk, you know, I’ll put it in there, right? And after one minute, it comes hot. Okay? So what is that microwave? It’s doing something magic over there, right? See, there’s no fire, right? There’s no heat. How is it that, you know, it’s going. So that’s kind of what, you know, Ayya does.
Prakash: [36:01] Oh, wow. Nice, nice.
Prakash: [36:06] Okay. It’s the last question. You get one-minute phone call from Elon Musk about India’s chip strategy, but he’s only interested in your wildest idea. How will you pitch it?
Raja: [36:18] Yeah, that’s a good, very good question. I was in Doha a couple of days ago. Okay? And I saw this huge infrastructure, right? You know, malls and highways and all that, beautiful, right? Huge, right? But there’s no people. Okay? You couldn’t find people in the streets, even in the mall, right? It’s very sparse. And here, you know, it’s just the opposite, right? And the people always walking somewhere, right? Congested, you know, streets and everything, right? So I would say, hey, you know, instead of making cars move and so on, why not we move, make the roads move, right? Instead of, you know, having trains, now, you know, so let’s say for example, a 5 kilometer radius, area, right? You pick that and you build something that you can hop on, hop off. So the rails will move, right? And so, you know, you can either walk on it or you just stand there, right? And you will get to your place, right? So every 5 kilometers, right, let’s say, you know, in a densely populated place, and we have very densely populated areas, right? You could do that. You remove, you know, the thought is the reverse, right? You don’t build more cars or more trains or more this and that, right? You make the infrastructure move, right? Rather than the thinking now. That’s a Elon idea in my opinion.
Prakash: [37:46] Who knows, you might end up pitching to him at some stage. Nice. Great set of answers, Raja. So let me shift back to where we left off, right? And you touched briefly on,some of your earlier answers is in terms of people building or the largest technology companies in semiconductors building for the affluent, which is the top 10%. And there is an opportunity in India to build for the masses, to solve problems which are very real. And you mentioned some of them. And what do you believe are those opportunity areas that startup founders in chips and semiconductors in India can take advantage of?
Raja: [38:29] Yeah. So, you know, I think one is, you know, fundamentally, right, if you’re just looking to make margins and, you know, things like that, that’s the western formula, right? But if you’re trying to solve real problems, right? For example, right? We’re, you know, the whole world is getting hotter, right? Getting hotter, warmer, you know, the peaks are, you know, pretty high. The consumption of air conditioning in India is going to go through the roof, right? Every summer there’s a shortage of air condition, right? You can’t even buy if you want to. Yeah. Right? So now, the West, I mean, there is a solution, right? But there are better solutions, right? They’re not just science projects, right? They’ve already graduated into actual stuff, right?
Prakash: [39:19] So you can do commercial.
Raja: [39:20] You can do commercial, which can reduce by 30 to 40%, 40% of the consumption, electric consumption, right? The number of watts, uh, you know. So there are a lot of solutions like that, right? You know, use DC motors, AC versus DC, right? You must have heard of current wars. Yeah. Right?
Prakash: [39:41] Yes.
Raja: [39:41] It’s a fantastic movie that I would encourage every, every...
Prakash: [39:45] Which one?
Raja: [39:45] Current wars.
Prakash: [39:46] Current wars. Okay. I thought of it as something else.
Raja: [39:47] That’s a good movie. It’s about between Westinghouse and Edison. And Tesla is there in between. It’s a fantastic movie. Why AC took over DC, right? Even though DC is more efficient. It’s a lot of politics in there too, right? It’s always about politics. So I think, you know, there’s a lot more solutions that, you know, one is, you know, on the power. I’m a big believer that you give me power and I can change the world. Right? You know. Because once you have power, right? I mean, literally power. You can create so many things. So assume, if you get free power, right? Imagine what all, you know, you could do with it, right? So my thinking is, you know, this is the way we produce power in this, you know, mega, you know, or giga stations and all that and then you transmit, you know, like my village is about 280 kilometers from Tirunelveli power plant. We get to my village, 280 kilometers. Yeah, right? And my village probably uses, I don’t know, entire village uses maybe 50 kilowatts or something. Right? And, you know, so you transmit all of this, right? Imagine, you know, if, if just about 20, 30 villages around there, maybe 1 megawatt is more than sufficient. We have a small power plant, solar with some batteries and all that, right? It will solve the problem, right? All this transmission problem. So I think there’s a lot of solutions, you know, power related. And once you have that power, right, that will, you know, give you more opportunities to create good water source, right? And so on, right?
Prakash: [41:41] Yeah. Even for the climate, it could be a...
Raja: [41:43] Yeah, you mean can kill climate changes, help in agriculture, you know, so localizing, right? Localizing, right?
Prakash: [41:51] Making communities self-sustained. Yeah.
Raja: [41:55] Yeah.
Prakash: [41:56] Great thought. And power makes me ask you another question. In fact, today morning I was reading about how scarce power has become with AI data centers coming up in US. And no question, it’ll expand to every part of the world. So how do you see AI and electrification in the lines of what India should or should not do and what could be the opportunities that it presents with the in terms of next wave of semiconductors?
Raja: [42:25] Yeah. I don’t know too much about AI to be frank with you, right? But I’ll tell you, you know, see, I mean, you’re with Intel, so you know, whenever you have a project, right? There is in every project, right? We are given a power budget, right? Yes. The chip has to work within the power budget. Looks like for this AI, you know, that’s out the door, right? You need a nuclear power plant apparently to run your chip, right? And that’s a given. I mean, you know, people are selling this, right? I mean, can you imagine, right? You know, those days, right? You know, if it’s, you know, one watt, it should be a one watt. If it’s 1.1 watt, you know, it won’t make the tapeout, right? So I think, you know, this solution, right? I think it’s a whole mafia behind this, right? You have to create, you know, energy, and, the oil companies want to sell more oil and all those kind of things. Natural gas has become big. Natural gas has become, yeah, all of this, right? So, you know, power-hungry solutions has become a solution, right? And then all the climate warming things and all that has actually taken a backseat, right? And you can see the last few years, right? So I think for India, I think we should come up with our own solutions, right? A lot more distributed way of doing things. Do we need this, you know, huge data centers and so on? And I’m not a, you know, I’m not a very, I don’t know, you know, between inference versus training and all those kind of things, right? But I believe that, you know, we have a lot of data, that we certainly do. We should come up with our own philosophy how we process it, how we, you know, use it. I think western data, a lot of it will be used for marketing and sales and how we, how people think and so forth, right? Social media, right? You know, do we need a game for every person in the world, you know? So I think, you know, we, we have different, you know, problems and different solutions to go after. The quality of life. So I think it should be a lot more distributed. I’m not a big believer at all, you know, in building this mega or giga centers. We should not get carried away with that. Give us time. Like, you know, I always say, right, if you give a problem to NVIDIA, and you give the same problem to a startup in India, right? NVIDIA will come up with a fantastic solution. 100% solving the problem. But it’ll be a very, very expensive solution, right? It cannot be a cheap solution because it goes against them, right? The same guys here, right? May not have a 100% solution, maybe 90% solution, but it’ll be a more practical solution, right? Because, you know, that’s how they are trained and how they know they try to solve the problem rather than. In fact, at NVIDIA probably has better solutions already, but they probably don’t want to introduce it into the market. You know, why would they, right? When you can make, you know, $20,000. $20,000 or $40,000 on a chip, right? Why would I, you know, introduce a, say analog front-end, you know,compute, analog-based computing and all. We have some guys doing it. Yeah. So I think, you know, um, from a solution standpoint, I think our AI should look different, solving different issues and should be a lot more distributed.
Prakash: [46:04] It’s a very contrarian thought and I agree with you that we have to come out with solutions which are very unique to our needs because our needs are unique. Yes. It’s not like any other country. Yeah, agree. You started IVP at 68, which is beyond incredible. So what made you do that and what is the vision for IVP?
Raja: [46:28] So IVP is, you know, focused on power, as I said, right? I’m a big believer in power. Yes. Uh, once you have given, give power to everybody, right? You know, then, you know, they, they will, the magic will happen in my opinion. So, I mean, you know, I enjoy what I do.
Prakash: [46:47] It clearly shows.
Raja: [46:48] Yeah. And, you know, people say I look young, young for my age. So I always tell my age so that, you know, people say, oh my God, you know, yeah. So I’m very proud of that. And I think I keep myself young because I deal with young people, right? That was a very good experience for me in Tessolve, okay? Most of my people, our, I think 90th percentile at one point was 26 or 27.
Prakash: [47:13] It’s amazing.
Raja: [47:14] The early years, right? 90th percentile, okay?
Prakash: [47:16] And all from small towns.
Raja: [47:17] All from small towns. I’m mostly. I kind of force it, right? My managers will say, oh, sir, you know, they don’t speak, you know, then we have problem, you know, because all my customers were, you know, American customers. I say, you give them a chance, man, you know, six months, nine months, they will be so loyal to you, right? And they’re bright, right? You know, they just maybe they’re not able to speak well, you know, you know, it’s not a city boys.
Prakash: [47:42] They have so much hunger.
Raja: [47:43] So much hunger, right? And I’ll tell you, you know, so many stories, right? But, you know, one of the things that the whole family, their family will be involved, right? We used to have family days where I encouraged them to bring their parents. Yeah. They were not married, you know, they want to bring their spouse, it’s fine. But, you know, bring your parents, right? I insist, bring your parents.
[48:06] And so many of them, right? Because they’re the first graduates again, right? You know, this kids, right? They would have sold everything, including their jewelry, everything to go put them through school and all. So now they have a job, they’re coming and see this nice office that the kid is working. And it was so exciting, right? And now, if they want to leave Tessolve, the parents will not allow them to do it. Okay? They say, you know, because they say, oh no, Mr. Raja has given you this opportunity, why are you, you know, loyalty and all these kind of things, right?
[48:40] Some of them, a lot of them got married to, you know, because they had a good job, you know. So, you know, so it was a whole family kind of, you know, so I work with a lot of young people. I feel younger, you know.
Prakash: [48:56] So true.
Raja: [48:57] And I’ve seen, you know, people who associate with the older people. They get older much faster. And my wife is also, you know, is part of this, right? She always says, why are you dressing like an old man? You know, she, she wants to dress me up, okay? So she wants me to wear some, you know, nice clothes and all that, look younger and you know, and if I, even if I walk a little bit, why are you walking like an old man? You know, so there’s always that thing about, you know, wanting to nudge that and say, hey, you know, you’re part of this, right? And I want to stay healthy, you know, I run and do things like that to stay healthy so I can play with my grandkids.
[49:37] So I think all of those, right, you know, just the pleasure of working with people. And technology as you know, right, is always intriguing.
Prakash: [49:46] Very, very true.
Raja: [49:47] Yeah.
Prakash: [49:48] Everything you said is a summary of the entrepreneurial impact in society, right? Employment. And you can dig deep into the country and source or hire people who would not have been given a chance. Right? So it’s amazing, incredible impact you have made.
Raja: [50:07] And I always feel that, you know, the MSMEs, right? Small, medium companies are where the innovation is happening. Okay? Will happen, right? Because they’re not ROI, IRR companies, right? They just want to make a living, right? So that’s one thing. The other thing is, the number of jobs creation is, you know, for the investment is much higher in MSMEs, right? So I also promote this with the government, right? Fund small startups that will actually, you know, let’s say, for example, build equipment. Equipment, you know, for semiconductor, you know, the big guys are basically integrators. So there’s a lot of, you know, I mean, Applied probably works with 10,000 suppliers, right? Everybody is small, right? And, so that’s where I think, you know, the need of the country is, right? And we have very innovating people. I mean, you look at Coimbatore, right? I think Tamil Nadu government setting up a park over there. Equipment park. Because of, you know, the talent there, right? Pune would be another, you know, good choice.
Prakash: [51:11] Great. Yeah. In fact, you and I have been in Malaysia and I’m sure you saw the same thing I saw, how chip and semiconductor industry transformed the country in terms of supply chain and the number of suppliers that came about in Penang and the adjoining areas is is absolutely stunning.
Raja: [51:31] Yeah. And it still doesn’t stop growing. They probably about 55 years now. I mean, they just keep growing and more innovations happening and...
Prakash: [51:41] Correct.
Raja: [51:42] The whole place has been uplifted.
Prakash: [51:43] Yeah, uplifted.
Raja: [51:45] I remember, you know, when I was in Fairchild, the first trip to Penang, right? So I was, of course, you know, I’m from Asia, so I know that. But I had to bring some of my guys go to Penang, you know, white guys. And they were like, oh, you know, Malaysia, right? We need to go in all these shots and all that. Hey, I heard, you know, there’s monkeys, you know, comes into the house and all those things. And I said, oh man, where are you guys living, you know? Go to Penang. I mean, this is so modern now, you know, I mean, this is, of course, I’m talking about eighties, right? So, you know, how things have transformed.
Prakash: [52:18] True. So, switching gears, a little bit on ecosystem, right? So you have been in the chip industry for a very long time and contributed significantly to it as well, a lot of it you talked about. And you have seen us as a country make, take swings at it more than once. Where do you see India stand today? And what do you think our policy makers could do the most to really take, make sure that this swing, we really succeed.
Raja: [52:57] Yeah. I really do believe, you know, if maybe three years ago if you asked me this question, then I said, not in my lifetime, right? But I think a lot of things have happened, on the ground. And also, you know, political, geopolitical, all those things are kind of enhancing our, my belief and also things that are happening on the ground.
[53:20] I think, you know, from a policy or from the government, right? They’re funding a lot of these big companies, you know, subsidies and so forth, right? But I believe that in this semiconductor specifically, it is built by passionate people, you know, smart, you know, I mean, you look at Broadcom, Qualcomm, Intel, anybody, right? They were not built by big companies, right? Nobody gave, you know, big companies money and said, hey,go and do some chip, right? They could have, right? But it’s never been, historically, right? Everywhere, right? You know, so it’s always been from the ground swell and then you get this geniuses, I call them, right? Who do this out of passion more than anything else, right? Yeah.
[54:13] So I think, you know, we need to focus on that a lot more. Take a bet on these guys, right? And, you know, fund the hell out, right? Maybe, initial days, right, you give them a certain amount of funding and see, right? So let us say you have 100 companies, right? And then you kind of say, okay, you know, these 10 guys, we should give them all out, right? Give them thousand crores, right, to build the next thing, whatever, right? Don’t give them 10 lakhs, 20 lakhs or something, right?
[54:47] So I think, you know, that kind of approach where you’re actually taking bets on these passionate people, right? Rather than the big corporates, right? They will do their thing, right? They will come in later, okay? So I would say, you know, rather than funding a lot of these type of companies because they will eventually become followers rather than leaders. If we want to be leaders, right? These geniuses who are, you know, scraping around, in the periphery are the ones who are going to be leaders, right? If we want to take leadership, if we just want to be, you know, me too kind of a country, right? Then give money to corporates. My fear is only that with all this funding and all that is going on, right? You know, we’re talking about one lakh crore, two lakh crores in the next few years, what would we see in 10 years from now? Are we creating, manufacturing centers, service centers for the foreign companies to come and use them and take, you know, benefit out of it, or are we going to have our own companies, Indian, proud Indian companies?
Prakash: [55:57] Like you said, solving Indian problems.
Raja: [55:59] Yes. Solving Indian problems is actually solving global problems.
Prakash: [56:02] And that’s true, right?
Raja: [56:04] So I think, you know, there’s a deep thinking we need to do now that now we’ve actually started rolling out. Where do we emphasize, right? And I think private sector has to step up in a big time. Today is still a very government initiative.
Prakash: [56:22] And why do you think that’s the case? I mean, I’ve seen more and more people talk about it. The government R&D spend is more than the private sector, which in India is very surprising. And secondly, even in the same semiconductor, I completely agree with you that there is a lot more happening on the government side than private sector side. Why do you think that is the case and what could be changed? What could entities like NASSCOM play as a contributor to the cause?
Raja: [56:54] Yeah. I think, you know, see, this NASSCOM and IESA, right? They are very powerful organizations in that sense, right? I mean, they’ve made a name for themselves and, and they’re the members, right? You know, if you put all maybe the 20 NASSCOM members, right? They probably, you know, their sales is more than 200 billion dollars or something, right? Combined, right? Or even more, right? So I think they have a huge influence on, you know, how they look at it.
[57:24] And I always tell these guys, right? You know, I mean NASSCOM is supposed to be software folks. But now you know, you look at it, right? Hardware, software, right? There is a link and, you know, it’s good business for them as well, right? So instead of telling the government to put more money or telling government what to do, I would think that NASSCOM can do something, right? Say, okay, you know, we’ll create a billion-dollar fund, right? You know, 20 guys, you know, each of you put like 50 million, 50 million dollars, which is within their reach, right? You create a billion-dollar fund and then, you know, look at some hyperscalers that you want to make, which is going to help all your, you know, NASSCOM folks, right? So things like that, very forward thinking and if you’re, if you don’t want to do R&D on your own, right?
[58:09] So things like that they could do. You know, private sector needs to set up through, you know, and granted that is hard to understand semiconductor business and most of the founders are, you know, in a way nerds and they like what they do. But for an investor to look at it and say, you know, can these guys actually build product and sell product, right? Because selling a product is different from building the product as you know, right? They believe that these guys are good designers but then, you know, now they have to touch, I always say - to make a chip, you probably have to touch 20 companies. It’s not like a software where you control everything, right? So these guys, right? are they capable of doing this? Dealing with the Chinese culture, Taiwanese culture, Japanese culture, you know, equipment, you know, and all that.
[59:08] So I think the trust level is very low. But I, I have a counteroffer, right? What I’m telling them is, look, these are the geniuses, right? You are big corporate. You know how to sell. You know how to take it to market and all that. You do it all the time, right? So you adopt these guys, right?
Prakash: [59:29] Interesting.
Raja: [59:29] You adopt these guys, right? And help them out. You know, maybe at the end of the month they can’t make payroll. Okay, you pay one crore, two crores is nothing in your thing, right? And you take them, right? I have an example, right? Let’s say, you know, TVS Motors, right? Venu Srinivasan is a very, very influential person, right? If he picks up the phone and he calls, you know, some automotive company and says, hey, you know, I have this, I’ve adopted this startup, can you give them a chance, take a look at their product, it’s, of course, you know, they will get the mind share, right? And all that he has to do is make a call, right?
[1:00:12] So I think they’re not connected yet. Sometimes I see this pictures, you know, like semicon, right? You know, Prime Minister is there and they’ve got all these people surrounding him, you know, photo op, right? And I said, what’s wrong with this picture? Where is the startup guy there? There’s AMD, there’s Intel, there’s Applied, there’s Lam, there’s all these guys. And you know, but then there’s no startup guy. Yeah. Right? So although we talk about all this, you know, startup and all that, but it doesn’t match. And that poor guy, you know, is, because Prime Minister is there, you know, he can’t even get into the arena. Yeah. So I think, you know, there is needs to be a balance, right?
Prakash: [1:00:57] A balance that is needed.
Raja: [1:00:58] Yeah.
Prakash: [1:00:59] Well said. So, if you were to, you worked in Valley, you worked in India as well, you talked a lot about what is needed for Indian ecosystem. So if you were to transport one aspect from the Valley to this place, which makes it better, what would that be? And what is the one thing you will leave?
Raja: [1:01:22] I think, the ecosystem, right? You know, Tessolve was trying to do on the ecosystem, right? Why people believe that they can do certain things, right? Because the ecosystem allows you, right? I mean, take chip manufacturing in the Valley, right? You have a guy who will just do the deposition for you, right? You can take your wafer, send it to him, he’ll just do the depo, send it back to you. And another guy will just do the packaging for you or something, right? So you can even actually split the entire fab process into, there’s so many little companies that will.
Prakash: [1:01:57] So hyper-specialized on one thing.
Raja: [1:01:59] So let’s say, right, I know how to run a litho, for example, I’m a litho engineer. Right? You set up a small litho shop, right? And you know, so again, right? My way of thinking is, you know, whatever you do best, right? You do that and you can offer that as a service, right? Tessolve was part of that, right? We wanted to create for actually for local companies. But there were no local companies at that time. So we ended up the usual servicing, you know, the big multinationals, right? So I think that’s one thing that I would strongly, strongly recommend.
[1:02:33] And these people are the people, you know, one of the issues they have, they don’t have capital. So if the government or, you know, anybody, right? Banks and so forth, you know, help in the capital, right? Give them a loan, right? You don’t even need to, you know, with maybe interest taken off by the government, right?
Prakash: [1:02:51] Reduced interest or low interest...
Raja: [1:02:52] Or let them, let the government pay the interest, right? I’m saying don’t even need to give grants, right? You be the collateral for the bank, the government can be the collateral or some private organization and then, you know, they pick up the interest, right? So to encourage this. So I think one is, you know, the ecosystem build up. I think, you know, you do.
[1:03:14] What I would not do is, I mean at least lately, right? You know, seems like the amount of funding that is going into, you know, this crazy valuations that are going in and then what has happened is, you know, the expectation of the startup people also has gone up, right? You know, initially, right? You know, we’ll work for, you know, one-fifth of our salary, right? You know, in the garage or somewhere, right? Which was a lot. Now it’s not, right?
Prakash: [1:03:46] 250 million.
Raja: [1:03:47] So now if I want to hire a staff, you know, for my startup, right? You know, good, let’s say, you know, power system architect or something, right? It’s going to cost me a one crore or something, right? So, I think, you know, this Silicon Valley, you want to be a startup but also you want a corporate thing, right? So, your payback has to happen later on. And I think, you know, that’s how you actually, I always feel that, you know, the moment you start earning this ridiculous money and so on, your focus is no more in running the thing, right? So, so that’s something that I will leave out in that sense.
Prakash: [1:04:33] Well said. Yeah. So, if you were to, you worked in Valley, you worked in India as well, you talked a lot about what is needed for Indian ecosystem. So if you were to transport one aspect from the Valley to this place, which makes it better, what would that be? And what is the one thing you will leave?
Raja: [1:04:49] So, what you do well, you can always pitch it and you can really defend it, right? You know, you can say that. But I think there are many things that in order to build a product company, you know, you need that which you don’t have, right? So how do you fill the gap, right? First of all, you need to understand that, right? You need to have the maturity to understand that, hey, you know, you need a team to build this, right? And you can’t just do it by yourself.
[1:05:23] And then the other thing is, you know, there’s no, somebody was, you know, I was just talking to a startup. It’s making a chip for automotive, right? Because everybody’s automotive, right? We want to get in automotive. And I said, okay, fine, you know, automotive is the flavor now looks like. You know, it will take three years for you to get, even if you have the chip ready today, right? It will take three years for you to get qualified and go through, right? And those big boys in that automotive, right? Whether it’s NXP or Infineon and all these guys, they’re not going to stand by and wait for you to come in, right? So think about all that, right?
[1:06:04] So don’t get too much carried away with what is the flavor and so on. But think about practically what you can do. And we got to also understand that, look, we are not going to create some earth-shattering new design coming out of India. Let’s be very frank, right? We’re going to be pragmatic. And we’re going to create something you already know, right? You know, you’ve come out of Qualcomm or Intel or NXP or so, right? You know what you know, right? So you’re not going to create something, you know, and because our system doesn’t also allow you. See, NVIDIA, right? He didn’t know he was going to do what, you know. And Jensen will tell you that. After 30 years, they figured. And it was the right time, right place, right? I mean, the GPU was dying, right? And then, you know, upon this AI thing, they’ll say, oh, we need a lot of computing. Okay, you know.
[1:07:02] So I think, most of the startup guys bank on what they can do, but what they cannot do, you know, is where the realization happens. And then, you know, you bring the right people or right consulting or the right funding in order to to fill that gap.
Prakash: [1:07:22] Okay. And to that end, given that you have seen it from so many different vantage points, what is the one thing about semiconductor industry that frustrates you the most that you would advise and a startup founder or an innovator on?
Raja: [1:07:41] I think the biggest challenge I see is in manufacturing for a startup, right? You know, the moment your tapeout, right, it goes into a black box, right? You don’t know what is happening there, you don’t understand pricing, you don’t understand what you could do, right? You know, maybe you could tweak a particular process and make your product better. So, you know, it’s very frustrating in that sense, right? You know, you could have the best design, but then you could never get it out. Right?
[1:08:15] So I think if there is something that whether it’s the government or the influence of this big industrial people, to give you a hand in managing that, or, you know, even today, right, there’s the Hong Kong investor, he said, oh, India’s going to be a powerhouse. It’s going to be a semiconductor powerhouse. We all know that. I mean, this is, you know, Hong Kong guy is saying it, right? So I think that that belief, right? And so you project bigger than you are, okay?
[1:08:50] You know, Tessolve, right? You know, when we were in the early stages, right? I know what we were doing in terms of sales and not being able to meet even payroll, okay? But the outside world, right? Including IISC and all that, they’re like, oh my God, you know, these guys are doing thousand crores and this and that, right? I mean, I’m talking about, you know, 10, 15 years ago, okay? So we managed to create this, right? I mean, we didn’t actually do it, but somehow, you know, it came out that way. So I think, you know, the belief that, you know, you could be bigger.
Prakash: [1:09:22] The self-confidence.
Raja: [1:09:23] The confidence that, hey, you know, yeah, you know, so what, you know, I think that it goes to the next level, the next. A lot of our founders are, you know, it’s like maybe it’s part of our culture, right?
Prakash: [1:09:38] A little timid.
Raja: [1:09:39] A little timid, yeah. You look at, you know, founders in the US. Yeah. Right? Very aggressive. there’s no tomorrow, right? Hey, you know, I can do this, you know?
Prakash: [1:09:50] Well, yeah. Some element of fake it till you make it, as they say. So we come a long way, Raja. I have a final question that I ask all my guests, which is this that India’s path towards semiconductors and deep tech is not only about domestic growth, it’s our place in the world when it comes to technology. So if you look out 10, 15, 20 years, what do you believe is India’s vision at that time or execution at that time? And what needs to happen today to make that vision a reality?
Raja: [1:10:28] Yeah, great question. See, you know, the semi market is supposed to be a trillion market, right? So basically doubling in the next eight to 10 years, right? We all believe that, right? Because of the usage of semiconductor and so on. Now, so what has happened in the last 60 odd years, right? We’re trying to squeeze it in the 10 years, right? So how are we going to make that happen? It cannot happen without India or Indians, okay? Because, you know, the size, you know, you’re trying to, you know, where is the talent going to come from, right? Where is the resource, right? Where is the market and so on. So I think, you know, as much as India wants to get into semiconductor, I think semiconductor needs India even more, right? In order to reach this.
[1:11:18] So I’m a firm believer that, you know, we’ll have a seat at the table regardless, okay? Now, can we take a leadership position? Can we set standards? Can we, you know, deal in the forefront of this? I think, you know, just like Reliance Jio or something, right? You didn’t hear about what, 10, 12 years ago? Right? Today they are number one, right? So I think, you know, there are opportunities like that. I think, you know, we will create certain companies or, you know, certain solutions. And I’d say when I say semiconductor, I’m not restricting to, you know, just a chip. It could be a subsystems, could be modules, so solutions, right? So I think, you know, we will provide entire solutions and so on, I think to go.
[1:12:07] Where I think, you know, the government can help is with all the use cases, right? Fund the use cases, right? So that gets proven.
Prakash: [1:12:17] There is demand.
Raja: [1:12:17] There’s demand. There’s proven, right? For example, I got to prove it. The one I told you about the air conditioning, right? I have the air conditioning. I have one ton, one and a half ton air conditioner, which can give you 30, 40% cheaper consumption. Yeah. I have it. Okay, right? But it’s got, of course, the incumbents don’t want it, right?
Prakash: [1:12:36] That’s true.
Raja: [1:12:37] Right? You know, if they can sell something, you know, for a much higher price, why would they want to do?
Prakash: [1:12:44] Why would they, yeah.
Raja: [1:12:45] So now, you know, the government could be a good case, you know, use case, right? You know, the secretariat in Tamil Nadu has probably, I don’t know, 200, 300 aircon, you know, one, one and a half tons sitting everywhere, right? Let’s say you give me, you know, and I can show, right?
Prakash: [1:13:06] The comparison.
Raja: [1:13:06] Comparison, right? So I think, you know, the government can help with a lot of the use cases. Give them the opportunity there, fund some of the use cases. They publish it, certify it. So, just like China, right? You know, there’s always a China standard, right? So why not, right? You know, create those kind of standards and certifications and all that. So the use cases is very important. And we have use cases, right? Because of the population we have and all that. My sister is a doctor, right? And, you know, Indian doctors who studied here and practiced here, then went by, went to the US and all that. One of the big difference they have is, you know, they used to see, my sister probably saw like 70, 80 cases a day, right? Whereas you see like five, you know, you’ll be lucky if you see five there, right? So, you know, now you talk about AI and, you know, training and inference. We already have that. By default. Our training was, you know, training cases we had, you know, thousands with you, right? So, yeah. So I think, you know, India has all the chaos that we have. So I think, you know, government helping them, you know in this situations, right?
Prakash: [1:14:24] Yeah, in the initial phase. Leadership. Fantastic. So is there anything else that you wanted to touch on that we didn’t cover?
Raja: [1:14:34] My message is this, right? You know, we have geniuses in our society, right? They are the future, right? Just like diamond in the rough, they’re everywhere. You can’t see it. Adopt them, find them, right? Put some, you know, money behind them, coach them, just like if you would do your own kid, right? If your kid wants to be, you know, good in basketball, you know, you would put all the money, you know, or a violinist, right? You’ll send him to all the violin schools and this and that, right? We have a lot of this geniuses that are in our midst. You know, whether it’s in school, high school, or, you know, in institutions, you know, maybe every graduating class, right? You pick two who are thinkers and, not just academically, right? Things like that and then, you know, get the industry to adopt them and build them out. And, you know, even in industries, right? You know, we find some of them are exceptional, right? You know, create some opportunities for them. Because they are our future, right? If we don’t believe in them and you know, then, you know, how will we...
Prakash: [1:15:53] Nothing. Nothing really happens without, yeah.
Raja: [1:15:57] Imagine, right? If these geniuses are in the US or Germany or somewhere, right? They will be instantly recognized, right? So to me, the startups are the geniuses.
Prakash: [1:16:06] Yeah. Fantastic. That’s a great place to close it. Thank you, Raja.
Raja: [1:16:10] Thank you. Thank you for coming.
Prakash: [1:16:11] It’s been a pleasure. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Raja: [1:16:13] Appreciate you coming over and...
Prakash: [1:16:15] For our audience, please follow us, please subscribe to our channel. The sessions that we do is base for you to provide us feedback on what kind of innovators, what kind of startup founders, what kind of conversations you would like to see or hear or listen to. So, thank you very much for your time and see you next time.