Indian design firms see uptick when recession ends

K.C. Krishnadas, EE Times
(07/01/2009 12:05 PM EDT)

BANGALORE, India — The current global recession is driving development costs down, prompting many Indian chip and embedded design service providers to predict an uptick once the downturn ends.

For now, providers are seeing a decline in new products and features or reductions in some projects.

"Most of our work in the semiconductor and embedded design space is strategic to our customers," said Abhishek Vanamali, head of marketing and strategy for engineering and R&D services with HCL Technologies Ltd. "As global technology companies are trying to deal with this recession by driving down costs without sacrificing product launches or product features or quality, we find that our value proposition of running extended R&D centers in India has only become stronger."

The chip industry has been slowed by weakness in the handset and consumer markets, but "semiconductor companies serving the industrial, medical and defense sectors are not much" affected, added S. Janakiraman, president and CEO for product engineering services at Mindtree Ltd.

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