Dr. Satya Gupta is ISA's new chairman

BANGALORE, INDIA: The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) has designated new roles to new people for the year 2012-13.

Dr Satya Gupta, founder and CEO, Concept-to-Silicon Systems has been elected as chairman of ISA, Sanjeev Keskar, managing director-sales of PMC Sierra India and SEA has been appointed as the vice-chairman and PVG Menon continues as the president of ISA.

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ISA is a trade body in India that represents the Indian electronic systems, semiconductor and embedded software industries. It is estimated to be equivalent to the Semiconductor Industry Association in the US.

The electronic systems design and manufacturing market that includes equipment, components and software is going to be a market worth $400 billion in 2020. The semiconductor industry seems to be one specific target area for most of the start-ups.

Speaking on his appointment Dr Satya Gupta, chairman ISA said, ''Our goal at ISA is to help develop a complete eco-system for design and manufacturing of electronics systems and semiconductor products. Working jointly with government, industry, academia and the venture capital community, we plan to create various foundational blocks and programs with the support of government to achieve the goal. Our task is to fulfill this market demand by making India the most favorable destination for electronics system design and manufacturing.''

Also read: ISA names new president

Dr Gupta has replaced Dr. Pradip Dutta, corporate vice president, Synopsys and Managing Director Synopsys (India), who headed as the chariman of ISA in the year 2011-12.

On the website of ISA, Dr. Dutta has left his farewell message saying, ''On this last working day of the FY 2011-12, it is tempting to reflect on the year that just went by but I would rather focus on the events that took place in the recent past, since my last message to you in the previous quarter. However, before we go to the details, let me take another opportunity to welcome the new members of the 2012-13 Executive Council. Each year, we are fortunate to have new participants in the EC who come with fresh ideas and this year will be no different.''

The executive council members who will continue with their respective designations are Guru Ganesan (ARM), Gani Subramaniam (Cosmic Circuits), Sanjeev Keskar (PMC Sierra) with PVG Menon (ISA) as the full time president and Satya Gupta (Concept2Silicon) taking over as the chairman.

And the executive members exiting along with Dr. Dutta are Praveen Vishakantaiah (Intel), Parag Mehta (QLogic), Sanjay Nayak (Tejas Networks), and Rajesh Mishra (Wipro).

Now the big question remains, is the change in the executive council board every year good for the Indian Semiconductor industry that has got enough potential to attract investments and new ideas from the start-ups? The R&D talent in the Indian Semiconductor industry is yet to gain maturity. So is the culture of changing and shuffling the executive board of ISA justified?