'Made in India' still a wish, but 'Designed in India' big trend: Somshubro Pal Choudhury

Q&A with Analog Devices India MD

Like many other multinational semiconductor design and manufacturing companies, Nasdaq-listed Analog Devices has made India a critical part of its global operations. The company, which set up its first design center in India in 1995, now has around 350 employees in the country. The company's India Managing Director, Somshubro Pal Choudhury spoke to Itika Sharma Punit about Analog Devices India's expectation to grow over 15% for the next three to five years backed by the 'Designed in India' trend and his expectations that the government's initiatives to push 'Made in India' will help the company succeed further. Edited excerpts:

What are Analog Devices' focus areas in India?

Analog Devices is broadly focused on five verticals globally - Industrial and Instrumentation (that includes defence, aerospace, energy, process control motor control, and building automation), automotive, medical, communication Infrastructure and consumer.

In India we have been focused on defence, space, process control, UPS/inverter and energy markets, which traditionally have done indigenous development. We are seeing a lot of activity around healthcare, communication infrastructure and automotive with multinational and design houses in the recent years.

What kind of potential do you see in the Indian market over the near-term?

While 'Made in India' is still on the wish list for all of us, except in a few verticals, the near-term opportunity would be for verticals catering to high-touch and low-mid volumes. But the biggest trend in the last few years is the 'Designed in India' phenomenon, with Indian subsidiaries of multinational companies and Indian design houses designing complete systems and subsystems for parent companies and global clients.

The Indian engineers who originally started with just software and information technology support have matured over the past decade doing embedded software, value engineering of systems, sustenance engineering and in the last few years have picked up complete system and subsystem design even though the manufacturing usually happens outside of India. So the talent for the ecosystem is getting well established for electronic systems.

What are your growth plans for India?

We will continue to enhance and diversify in our key areas of excellence, and grow and train engineering teams as we take on more such initiatives. At the same time we continue to work with a select set of design houses in India who are both our vendors and customers as they are designing systems for our global customers.

What kid of investments have you made in India in the recent years?

We have increased our investments in marketing, sales and field support engineering in lieu of our growing customers across multinationals, large Indian public sector companies, design houses and large number of smaller to medium original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Our Analog Devices India team in Bangalore has grown 20% in the last one year and we have also taken up an additional facility recently.

In India, we have always been focused on growing and grooming the talent based on ownership of certain category of products. What this has resulted in is key areas of excellence in India where the India team is involved in designing the chip, designing the software on the chip, testing and characterising the chip when they are back from the Fab and also supporting customers globally when product is out in the market, resulting in complete product ownership.

What kind of growth do you estimate to see in India over the next few years?

We do not disclose our numbers at an India level. But our pipeline is strong and we expect to grow 15-18% for the next three-five years based on the 'Designed in India' trends. The government's initiatives and push in terms of 'Made in India' would accelerate that.