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US-based semiconductor company Synaptics is focusing on developing its R&D footprint in India, President & CEO Michael Hurlston shared. Over the next three years, the company intends to double its India headcount from 400 to over 800. For the company, whose revenue is around $1 billion, India is its largest site by headcount.
While 18 per cent of employees are in the US, the rest 82 per cent are overseas, with India leading the pack. “India is our most important development site today. We intend to double our headcount here over the next three years, including hardware engineers, software engineers, RF engineers -- the whole gamut,” Hurlston said.
For the company, India is an emerging market, he added. Last week, it announced a partnership with software company embedUR systems, which has a significant presence in Chennai , to produce solutions -- both software and hardware -- that can be sold into the Smart Metering market. Through this partnership, the companies intend to deliver affordable AI-powered Edge solutions for India’s smart device market.
“India is a huge consumer of semiconductor devices. But for the most part, at least in the markets we play in, devices are being manufactured elsewhere by the likes of Samsung, LG, and different automotive manufacturers. Some decisions these brands make about which components are selected do not necessarily happen in India but in Korea , China , Japan , and other locations.
Thinking about India as an end market, we aren’t doing a lot here because the decisions for our products are made elsewhere. However, we see India emerging. Things like smart meters, where design decisions and manufacturing happen in India, is an important opportunity,” the CEO explained.
Other markets beyond smart meters include glucose monitors with a big Made in India for India footprint, which is another market Synaptics continues to explore. However, according to Hurlston, its primary focus is on smart metering. Also read: BSNL employees oppose second Voluntary Retirement Scheme The CEO said Synaptics is also examining packaging chips in the country and is “aggressively” exploring a partnership with Advanced System in Package Technologies (ASIP), which is trying a unique approach to packaging semiconductor devices in India.
“Their first phase is to establish their factory in Korea to learn the system. They intend to then bring that quickly to India. We think they could be a great partner for us; we’d love to be an early customer, and it’s a matter of getting the factory.
As I understand, the timeline is about a year away from them having an operational factory in Hyderabad. On the customer piece, we’d like to announce some strategic partnerships within the next four to five months and that’s a matter of us working on some product details with embedUR and putting those into the market.” The fabless semiconductor company outsources 100 per cent of its manufacturing, with most wafers coming from Taiwan, which is also the predominant source of its packaging technology.
Some packaging also comes from Korea and China. “We consider our differentiator, the semiconductor IP coming from our designs; we don’t consider our differentiator to be manufacturing. We think TSMC, UMC, and our manufacturing partners do a better job no matter how much we invest.
So, we are applying our investment dollars as much as we can in design and the generation of intellectual property through semiconductor design,” said Hurlston. Comments.
