eInfochips plans 9th offshore devt centre

Ahmedabad-based eInfochips, which specialises in providing outsourcing of electronic design solutions and services, intends to set up its ninth offshore development centre (ODC) in India shortly.

At present, the company operates eight ODCs for various customers in Ahmedabad, Pune and Bangalore. Its ninth ODC is being planned in Ahmedabad and Pune.

"We are in discussions with a US-based client. The proposed ODC will work on streaming media applications for the client," Pranav Shah, Head (Communication & Firmware Group), eInfochips, told Business Standard.

The other ODCs are being operated for various semiconductor companies in areas such as Application Specific Integrated Circuit and product design solutions.

The company derives 50 per cent of its revenues from the ODCs with the balance coming from independent projects.

Shah said that the company would focus on ODCs for growth since it provides predictability in business apart from generating substantial revenue. While chip design services and embedded solutions account for 80 per cent of the privately held company's revenue, the balance comes from software related services.

From a geographical perspective, US contribute 80 per cent of the revenue while Japan and Europe account for another 10 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent revenue comes from its Indian operations. In India, the company provides chip design services to global firms operating in the country.

According to Shah, the company expects India to drive more business in the coming years. "Of late, global firms in the semiconductor space operating in India have begun to outsource the chip design work to local companies in a big way. We expect this trend to gain momentum in the coming years," he pointed out.

The company is a member of Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processing Third Party Network. It gives the company an opportunity to develop products based on TI's chipsets. For instance, eInfochips has developed IntelliServe based on TI's DaVinci technology.

Intelliserve is a multi-channel video server which helps migrate conventional CCTV systems to intelligent IP-based systems. The design offers features like object detection, classification and tracking.

eInfochips employs close to 670 personnel across the three cities. While 110 are on the chip design services, 300 personnel are employed for embedded software solutions. It operates seven design centres, four in Ahmedabad, two in Pune and one in Bangalore.

The Bangalore centre is small though it can seat up to 100 employees. "The Bangalore centre will be ramped up gradually. We will have up to 40 employees working at the Bangalore centre by the end of the current fiscal," Shah said.