eInfochips to double headcount

Silicon chip design company eInfochips is planning to double its headcount at its research and development centres this fiscal and tap new markets.

"We had 270 engineers at our development centres in Ahmedabad and Pune. We plan to take this number to 550 by the end of 2005-06," Pratul Shroff, founder and chief executive Officer of eInfochips said.

eInfochips' new development facility in Pune, which started in January, has 25 people while the rest are in Ahmedabad. "The number of people in Pune facility will grow to 100 be end of this year," he said. Till now the company has focussed on the US market. "This year we will expand our business to Europe and Asia-Pacific," Shroff said.

For operations in Europe, the company will open an office either in UK or Germany while for expanding in Asia-Pacific the company is looking for an office in Japan. The company recently acquired two new customers in Taiwan.

Apart from new geographies, the company will beef its sales presence in US. It might also station a small team of engineers in that market for pre-sales technical support to clients.

eInfochips has 30 clients including some of the biggest name in business like Texas Instruments, Verisity, Xilinx and Wind River. In 2004-05 the number of clients added by the company stood at 13. To take advantage of opportunities that the market offers, eInfochips is building capability on three new technology platforms.

"We are strongly focussed in video as we feel that in next three to five years video communications will see a huge jump. Consumer electronics market will also be dominated by video," Shroff said.

Other areas that the company is focussed on are designing chips that make internet-based surveillance systems possible. "We are also forming a practice on Field Programming Gate Array (FPGA), which takes chips embedded with software to a new level.

While in embedded chips software sits on hardware, in FPGA the algorithm is a part of the hardware and can be altered when required," he added.