Synopsys looks to expand India footprint

Focuses on three business verticals, with design automation at the core

 Synopsys India, part of the $2.057-billion Nasdaq-listed electronic design automation (EDA) company Synopsys, on Thursday said it is looking at expanding its footprint by partnering with local players, along with established global players.

Synopsys India corporate vice president and managing director Pradip K Dutta told Deccan Herald the company wants to becomes the provider of high-end services in verticals like automotive, healthcare, and entertainment. “Besides partnering with Indian semiconductor designing companies for EDA and software capabilities, we are also actively working with global players like Intel, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Brocade, and Freescale,” he said.

Dutta said the company is focusing on three business verticals and the core of this is electronic design automation. “It starts from writing HDL (hardware design language) and extends to where the chip is taken to its foundry and later for testing. Around 75 per cent of our revenues come from it. We are also engaged in other areas connected with the design industry like IP and systems, which helps us in making building blocks in chips which can be customised later.”

The company got into the latest vertical of software integrity (software validation) with chip-design companies and enterprise customers. “When developers write millions and millions of codes, there will be errors. Software is our strength as we make design software for chip development and testing. Integrity of chips without bugs is very important. Here our DesignWare Hybrid IP Prototyping Kits accelerate IP prototyping and software development. Revenues from this segment are $100 million and growing. We are eyeing 20 per cent to 30 per cent growth in software business,” he said.

With the seamless combination of the virtual development kit, HAPS FPGA-based prototyping system, and DesignWare IP reference drivers, Synopsys helps developers to accelerate IP prototyping, software development, and integration.

Synopsys, which has operational offices in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida, and New Delhi, has about 1,800 employees in its payroll “We are looking for more architects who can think out of the box. In India, we have more people to execute than for architecting and so IP creation is lagging. Of the 2,000 patents registered by the company, only two per cent comes from India,” he said.

“Our business is core research and development oriented. We are primarily an engineering company with customers at our centre. We are looking for technical talent. Our manpower growth is 10 per cent every year. Also, inorganic growth has been powered by the acquisitions of Avanti, Virage Logic, CoWare, Synplicity, and Magma Design Automation,” he said.

Besides engaging with design service business with companies like Wipro, TCS and HCL, Synopsys is helping the government in various segments, especially defence.

He also said the company is actively involved with around 200 educational institutions in its bid to develop an ecosystem. “We give them our software tools at discounted prices. We want them to undertake VLSI (very large scale integration), chip design and other other software development within our ecosystem. We help in designing these labs,” he said.