A Profile of Cosmic Circuits

ganapathy-subramaniamb&w Entrepreneurs are now gearing up to developing world class products and intellectual property out of India. Product development comes with great risks, and to the optimist, with even greater rewards. We profile entrepreneurs and their war stories on how they are approaching this exciting world of products and innovation.

With a very successful career at Texas Instruments - as a senior manager of design and development work, what motivated you to create Cosmic Circuits?

The semiconductor market looked very promising and has a huge growth potential. With the present growth rate, the semiconductor market in India is expected to reach $36.3 billion by 2015. This is just 10% of the larger $363 billion electronics market in India. Our core team has a combined specialized experience of 80+ years in the semiconductor industry. With sufficient experience, a focused entrepreneurial goal and huge local opportunities, we had the right ingredients to create Cosmic Circuits.

Can you share some of the challenges that you initially faced when you started your company?

As in any entrepreneurial venture, we faced significant challenges during the initial days of our company. The area of analog IP cores that Cosmic is focusing on is very niche and customer oriented. Owing to the fact there are very few Indian companies involved in semiconductor technology, it was a general belief that IP core design could not be done out of India. Changing this general belief and proving that IP core design was possible from India was the biggest challenge that we initially faced. However, with a combination of our patented IP core designs, quality design work, and early breaks we were able to overcome the first road block.

The second road block was finding right talent specialized in analog IP design. Since this industry is still in its early stages, you find very few engineers specialized in this field. We addressed this issue by collaborating with premier institutes like IISc and the IITs. Cosmic Circuits involved with these institutes at the teaching level to get engineers with required specialization.

Bangalore is growing into a semiconductor hub apart from software, and is becoming truly the ‘Silicon City' of India.

For a high technology industry like yours, do you find yourself in a conducive ecosystem in Bangalore?

Thanks to the Indian software companies, a global brand name and high visibility has already been created for India. Our market is clearly global. Being a part of the software and technology ecosystem in Bangalore really helps the semiconductor industry to reach out to the global market. Organizations like the Indian Semiconductor Association have enabled us to find ourselves in the right kind of semiconductor ecosystem. Bangalore is growing into a semiconductor hub apart from software, and is becoming truly the ‘Silicon City' of India. So, for a company like Cosmic Circuits, Bangalore offers the best conducive ecosystem in semiconductor space.

How important is protection of ideas and innovations to your business?

Without doubt, it is very important to protect innovations and ideas that we come up during the design and development stage. In fact, we regularly file patents to protect our intellectual property. To ensure maximum protection we file a provisional patent as soon as we conceptualize an idea and within a year convert it to a regular patent. Considering the future, we technologically want to be a few steps ahead of where we stand today.

Considering the future, we technologically want to be a few steps ahead of where we stand today.

What are innovative trends in semiconductor space and particularly in the Analog semiconductor space that you foresee?

What we see changing in analog design is that certain portion of analog processes is much suited to work as digital processes. The analog and the digital processes are being integrated into IP cores to create a system-on-chips. Analog design is very difficult in this integrated form. This is where Cosmic comes into play. Cosmic has IP cores with analog and digital integration at 80 nm and 65 nm. Cosmic is also foraying into the 40nm level which only a handful of companies in the world are working on.

You were recently awarded the Red Herring Asia 2007 award. How do you feel about it?

Cosmic Circuits was selected for this award as one of the top 100 promising Asian companies. The Red Herring Award is an indication of the potential and performance of the company in the analog semiconductor space. We were also nominated for the Red Herring Global top 100 global. Apart from recognition through awards, our close collaboration with top foundries has lead to the recognition of Cosmic as a valuable design partner.

As an entrepreneur yourself, what is your advice to budding entrepreneurs?

I am not sure if I am qualified to give "advice". But I want to say that there is enormous opportunity in the electronics and semiconductor industry in India. Software service companies have created a huge opportunity for us by already creating a brand name for India. Product firms can take advantage of the skill set available and the branding.

Authors, Gosakan Aravamudan - patent consultant, Ash Tankha - US patent attorney, and Vikram Chetiar can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Issue BG82 Jan 08

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