Synopsis India open to buyouts

Synopsis India Ltd, the 100 per cent subsidiary of the $1.2 billion, electronic design automation company, today said it is open to acquiring a couple of Indian companies operating in similar fields that will provide synergy.

The US-based Synopsis has also firmed up plans of sourcing technical support service to its global clients from India.

The company has in fact drawn up plans of gradually increasing the number of support staff at its Hyderabad office and the number at Silicon Valley and Oregaon is slated to reduce over the next couple of years.

"At present, we have 55 support staff at our Hyderabad unit, which is slated to increase at the rate of 25 per cent in the next few years, until we have replaced all our support staff in the two overseas locations," explained, Pradip K Dutta, president and managing director, Synopsis India.

Dutta said, "We are continuously evaluating opportunities of taking over smaller companies with newer and novel technology, that would be complimentary to Synopsis' development process. If we find companies that meet our technical and business requirement we take them over".

"Synopsis as a whole as acquired as much as 30 per cent of the global market place, followed by two other players. The rest of the market is divided into a large number of small and medium sized companies who are jostling for market share. These smaller companies are our acquisition targets. We all take over team of people working on a definite new technology," Dutta explained.

Synopsis India at present employs around 200 at two its facilities, bulk of which are engineers involved in research and development. Plans are to increase the the quantum of research and development activity in the country.

"With the availability of one of the best talent pools in the country, we plan are well placed to gradually increase the quantum of R&D in India. R&D would involve, planning, designing, and testing of chips but given the state of infrastructure in India, manufacturing is a distant possibility," he added.