SmartPlay to focus on China, Japan

SmartPlay, a design services company with expertise in digital, analog, wireless software and system design, on Thursday announced its market strategy to expand in the APAC region with a focus on China.

In an interaction with Deccan Herald, SmartPlay President and CEO Pradeep Vajram said currently most of the company’s revenues came from North America.

“We receive around 90 per cent of our turnover from North America, majority from the United States. We are now focusing on the Chinese and Japanese markets,” said Vajram.

SmartPlay, which started operations in 2008, has design centres in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Greater Noida, San Jose, San Diego, Austin, and Singapore. The firm has also opened offices in Canada and Germany. In all, it employs around 1,300 people.

“We wanted to focus on the niche segment of embedded application development in areas like bluetooth and Wi-Fi. SmartPly also gives System on Chip (SoC) design services to Intel to help clients of the semiconductor giant reduce time-to-market and enhance efficiency,” he said.

When asked about the company’s revenues, he said last fiscal it registered around $75 million and is likely to log 25 to 30 per cent growth. “The company was ranked as the second largest VLSI design services company in India. We are a preferred design services partner for several Fortune 500 and mid-sized semiconductor and system companies working on graphics, mobile, multimedia and processor technologies,” he said.
“The world is undergoing dramatic changes with Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, and smart cities. Besides prospective business opportunities from these areas, chip design companies are facing the humongous challenge of reducing power consumption, and the need for high speed and performance,” he said.

On the hiring front, Vajram said the company is looking more for lateral hiring. “Around 90 per cent of hiring is via lateral hiring because chip designing is a highly skill-intense domain and we need experienced workers to execute it. We are also recruiting freshers and have started an in-house smart training programme which has already trained 50 students,” he said.

He, however, cautioned about fab manufacturing.  “Fab manufacturing is a capital intense area and there are countries which have full-fledged ecosystems in this regard. What we can focus is on the services by designing it with our software talent pool,” said  Vajram.
According to a recent PwC study, IoT will drive a 29 per cent increase in semiconductor industry business over the next five years. “The global semiconductor industry billings will increase to $432 billion by 2019, corresponding to a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2 per cent,” states the study.