Reapan Tikoo

How many chances would you give a small Indian company competing against giants in the chip design verification market? One would say not too many. But if you look at the passion, energy level and technology of Powai Labs, you would come back believing that this company has the potential to beat the best in the world. Says Reapan Tikoo, CEO, Powai Labs, “Currently, chip design firms are hampered by the high cost of tools for verifying and validating their designs. But with our product, a chip design company can get its design validated at one-tenth of the existing cost.” What’s more, companies can get chips validated with a much lesser number of gates, thanks to Powai Lab’s products. This effectively means that instead of testing their designs on a big emulation box, a company can just buy an emulation card according to the application and give it to each of its engineers.

Tikoo believes that the product is affordable for a chip design firm to be able to give it to every engineer who wants to test his/her design. Thus, the two important aspects of scalability and design can make Powai Labs one of the leaders in this space. The product is appropriately titled Image (I made a great emulator) and four patents have already been filed. Though the company was formed only in April 2001, orders are pouring in from countries like Singapore and the US. The success of the product can be seen from the fact that the company has already bagged some orders from global companies.

Companies like Texas Instruments, Intel, TCS and Broadcom have already validated the product. With this product, Powai Labs is looking at a potential market estimated to be close to $1.5 billion by the year 2003. Apart from building a range of products in the chip design verification segment, the company also plans to achieve growth in revenues from services offered around its products. Going forward, Tikoo sees around 40 percent of revenues coming from the services segment.

The business plans of the company have been also fine-tuned. In the coming years, the company plans to make a transition from India, where it has been incubated, and spread over in the US and Europe for serving the dual purpose of exploring new markets and also for being closer to clients. Adds Tikoo, “There will be three subsidiaries—EU, Far East and America—and each subsidiary will have its own CEO. The R&D centre and corporate headquarters will be based in India and will support all the three subsidiaries.”

As most companies in the chip verification space don’t have the scalability of a Powai Labs, Tikoo is planning to enter into alliances with such companies, rather than competing head-on. Using the distribution networks of the established companies, Powai Labs is looking at widening its reach. There are also plans for a Web-based model where customers can directly purchase and order the company’s products over the Net. This is where the distribution strengths of established companies will be of great help. With people like Madhav Desai (one of India’s best known experts in the microelectronics space) on its advisory board, along with path-breaking technology and a good business vision, Powai Labs surely holds the promise of becoming a great company.