Design in India is the key for success of Make in India: Kumud Srinivasan

Interview with President, Intel India

Intel is one of the few large multinational technology companies that have been leveraging the talent in India for advanced research and development (R&D) works. With programmes like Digital India and Make in India taking shape, and with increasing focus on innovation, the California-headquartered chip maker is increasingly empowering its R&D division in India. In an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, Intel India President Kumud Srinivasan talks about these developments and also how India should promote its design capability to make ‘Make in India’ initiative a success. Edited excerpts:

How has Intel India grown in the recent past?

Intel India has about 6,900 employees (including McAfee). We doubled our headcount over the past three years. Over 70 per cent of our workforce here is focused on R&D. We started R&D about 15 years ago. Server and client development work commenced about 10 years back and we added all-in-ones, tablets, phones, internet of things (IoT) and wearables over the years. Apart from contributing to our global roadmap, we do have a team over here in existence for the past couple of years that focuses on local innovation.
 

What kind of work are you doing in the IoT space out of the India R&D centre?

Going forward, as the country starts taking up the ambitious 'Digital India' agenda and with things like smart cities coming up, IoT is expected to play a very big role. 

If you look at what an IoT solution is, it is essentially end-to-end. It has got sensors at the edge, it has got data which is going through the connected pipes in the middle and a gateway at the back-end. Then with the use of analytics at the backend, you feed predictive actions to the sensors. If you look at Intel's product portfolio, we have got offerings across that entire value chain. Thus, we are very uniquely positioned as IoT explodes in India. In addition to our engineering capability, we can leverage the powerful ecosystem of system integrators in India.

How is Intel engaged with the start-up ecosystem in the country?

We are about to launch something called the ‘Intel India Maker Lab’, an incubation centre that will focus on start-ups doing hardware innovations. Over the years, we have been encouraging innovations in the country in many ways. It started with skill development — one example is influencing the curriculums in colleges and universities by including things like embedded systems and multicrore-architecture. In 2010, we started a contest called ‘Embedded Systems Challenge’ to encourage innovation among engineering students and entrepreneurs. Earlier this year, we kicked off ‘Innovate for Digital India’ challenge. Probably, the first batch of people in the Maker Lab will be from that contest.

On the hardware side, while not much of manufacturing is happening in the country, India is basically known for its design capabilities. Is it changing?

When Intel India started its R&D journey, it was largely staff augmentation. We have been gradually moving up the value chain. The complexity and the kinds of work we are doing have increased over the years. At this point in time, it seems all of the multinational R&D centres here are doing fairly complex and advanced engineering work. I think, in the next level, we could shoot for when we actually get into defining strategy, instead of just executing it. We have the potential to do that. A lot of things are coming together to make this happen. The government has increased focus on programmes such as digitisation and industrial automation, combined that with the maturity level of R&D in India is rising.
 
Has Intel India also graduated to the next level, getting involved at the strategy level?

That is essentially what where we are shooting for. That’s the aspiration. Generally speaking, we at Intel India today are a very credible centre of execution for Intel. What we want to see ourselves move into is strategy definition and strategy ownership.

Have you got the global mandate?

It's a chicken and egg kind of situation. You have to demonstrate capability before you get the mandate. It basically requires two things - in-depth technical leadership and creation of a culture where we can empower ourselves to do such things. We are at a stage where we can demonstrate capability and a lot of conversations happening around this.

During the last three years, we at Intel India have really stepped up our efforts to develop technical leadership. One can become a principal engineer (PE), a senior PE, an Intel Fellow and a senior fellow. Today, we have got 20 PEs and four senior PEs, which is roughly double of what we had about two years ago. We definitely can do a lot more.

Talking about Make in India, how much of that is achievable, according to you?

When the prime minister kicked off Digital India, he also talked about ‘Design in India’. We think it’s the time for ‘Design in India’ to get more focus. Through that, Make in India will become an R&D powerhouse that will create a virtuous cycle in the ecosystem that will create the scale, bring innovation in the hardware space and create manufacturing jobs, and all of that.

Because of the impact it can create in the R&D space, the ‘Design in India’ could become the horse that pulls the economy along. That is something we are talking to our peers about in the industry and we have been talking to the government about. And it resonates with a lot of people — that Design in India and increased focus on R&D in India is actually the place we should shoot for. If you look at ESDM (electronic system design and manufacturing), the ‘M’ in this has caught in a lot of attention so far. It is the ‘D’ that now needs to get a lot of focus as well. We believe what will make a difference and take us there is for the government to actually come forward and announce incentive packages that are focused on design in India. Quite a few countries have actually done that very successfully such as Ireland, Israel or, most recently, Singapore.

Are you planning to further scale up Intel India R&D team?

Last year, we hired some 1,000 people including college graduates, student interns as well as experienced ones. The strategy is we will move resources from areas of surplus to areas of need. So it's not easy to say how much we will grow in any given year because it's not completely the result of growth in India alone; it's a result of resourcing decision that has been made worldwide.