Semiconductors at the Forefront: Shaping Tomorrow's Tech Landscape with Innovative Solutions

In the fast-paced world of technology, semiconductors are the unsung heroes, powering the devices and innovations that shape our lives. From smartphones to medical equipment, they're the building blocks of tomorrow's tech landscape. With each breakthrough, they redefine what's possible, driving progress and sparking new ideas. As we look ahead, it's clear that semiconductors will continue to lead the charge, shaping a future filled with even more remarkable solutions.

Tessolve, a prominent provider of system productization and silicon engineering solutions, operates across 21 countries in the US, Europe, and APAC regions. With its own infrastructure and top-notch lab facilities, Tessolve boasts a global team of 3000 engineers.

Specializing in product development from inception to manufacturing as an original design manufacturer (ODM), Tessolve focuses on automotive, industrial, and avionics market segments. They expedite time to market with ready-to-use system modules and application system solutions, leveraging deep domain expertise, innovative thinking, and a process-driven approach. Additionally, Tessolve has built strong partnerships within its ecosystem, including supply chain and post-production lifecycle management.

One of Tessolve's offerings is the TERA automotive platform, which is available as a white-labeled product family. TERA comprises service-oriented high-performance gateways, transmission control units (TCU), zonal and domain controller platforms, as well as an onboard diagnostics (OBD) dongle. It enhances software-defined vehicle architecture, delivering a distinctive customer experience. Furthermore, Tessolve provides firmware over-the-air (FOTA) services through its partner, Excelfore.

The TERA platform is built on NXP’s S32G vehicle networking processor, which boasts edge computing capabilities.

Srini Chinamilli, CEO, Tessolve has over 25 years of experience in Semiconductor Engineering and Management. He held technical and management positions at Cirrus Logic and Centillium Communications before joining Tessolve as Co-Founder. He has extensive experience in Silicon Validation and product Engineering and has managed high-volume productization of several complex Systems on Chip and Mixed Signal devices. He takes pleasure in building startup teams into world-class organizations. Srini completed his Master's in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and Bachelor's in Electronics from Birla Institute of Technology.

During the conversation with Srini Chinamilli, Co-founder & CEO of Tessolve, he discussed how Semiconductors are at the forefront, shaping tomorrow's tech landscape with innovative solutions. He highlighted Tessolve's remarkable journey and contributions to the semiconductor industry, positioning us as pioneers in driving innovation and excellence.

Dive into the in-depth interview here:

Introduction.

Tessolve is the world’s largest stand-alone semiconductor solutions company in the world.

With over 3000 employees with capabilities in Semiconductor chip Design, Test & Product engineering and Embedded Systems design, we provide a comprehensive engineering platform for anyone who wants to build a chip or end products around these chips.

Over the course of the last 20 years, we have productized hundreds of semiconductor designs and helped our customers accelerate their engineering initiatives.

How has Tessolve leveraged its global expansion and diverse engineering team to overcome challenges and emerge as the largest standalone semiconductor engineering solutions company worldwide?

Right from the early days, we focused on cultivating a customer-focused and employee-centric culture that encourages engineering excellence and spirit of entrepreneurship.

We faced many challenges in the early days as we were new kids on the block and trying to implement projects for US-based customers from India. 

The lack of a semiconductor ecosystem in India when we first started was the biggest challenge. We had to setup state-of-the-art labs in India without adequate support for service and maintenance support locally. 

We were running out of funds and had to make a choice many times whether we get paid or suppliers get paid. We overcame all these challenges by adhering to our core values and building a great culture and as a result a great team. We began to have some big wins at key customers and we never looked back.

We are now proud to have 15 of the top 20 semiconductor companies in the world as our partners.

With over 3,000 employees across 10 countries, could you share Tessolve's strategies for expanding operations, especially in India, and how these investments contribute to the company's growth and global competitiveness?

Tessolve is headquartered in Bangalore and has a large presence in Chennai, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Noida, Hubli, Bhubaneswar, and Kochi. This allows it to gain access to India’s large and growing market, increasing its potential customer base and revenue. 

India offers a competitive talent pool with expertise in engineering and technology. Expanding operations in India could allow Tessolve to leverage this talent pool to reduce costs and improve profitability. 

By setting up operations in India, Tessolve has created a global delivery model, allowing us to offer services around the clock and cater to different time zones. This strategy has potentially increased our efficiency and responsiveness to customer needs. 

India has a large pool of engineering talent and a growing focus on innovation. Tessolve has one of the Industry’s best training models which it makes the freshers industry-ready. The training includes classroom training, training on live projects, training on testers, and hands-on training. 

Given the significant growth in semiconductor design activities and government initiatives in India, how does Tessolve envision its role in catalyzing the country's semiconductor ecosystem?

Tessolve has been in India for over 20 years. Being the first movers in the country we had to invest a lot in setting up the eco system in India. We were the first to set up state-of-the-art Semiconductor Tests and Qualification labs in the country. We also had to train engineers from the ground up to fulfill the engineering needs. We have trained over 5000 engineers in the course of Tessolve history. Now we see good momentum from the government side as well. We will play a key role in enabling semiconductor product companies as well as the manufacturing facilities that are coming up. We have massive engineering strength and capabilities to be a key enabler for all the new India-based semiconductor companies coming up in the semiconductor ecosystem.

With a focus on AI, automotive technologies, and expanding semiconductor content across industries, how does Tessolve identify and prioritize opportunities in these domains to maintain its competitive edge?

Tessolve sees AI as a huge opportunity and we have been investing in this space over the last 2 years.

The opportunity for us is twofold.

Firstly, Gen AI applications are pushing the need for a lot more custom chips that have massive compute

power required for Data centers as well as very low power efficient chips required for edge processing. 

We have invested in our Center of Excellence initiatives to develop engineering development methodologies for AI chips ahead of time enabling us to have project wins at our key clients.

The second opportunity for us is to use GenAI to improve efficiencies in our engineering development process. For example, we have a large database of engineering Test programs we have developed over the years. We are using GenAI to develop custom tools to cut the development cycle by over 50%. This gives us a huge competitive advantage. We are rolling out AI in all areas of the company including engineering, HR, Finance, Sales, Operations etc

Tessolve plans to grow its workforce by 20% annually and expand operations in second-tier cities in India. Could you elaborate on the rationale behind this strategy and its implications for the company's growth and talent development?

Traditionally, we have done most of our hiring of engineering talent from second-tier cities. We had great success with this model as most of the engineers have very good work ethic and eager to learn and excel. We then set up engineering centers in second-tier cities and that has been a success as well. The attrition rates are much lower than in Bangalore and other big cities.

We have successful operations in Coimbatore, Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Hubli, and Cochin. We will continue to expand in these cities.

Could you provide insights into Tessolve's approach to acquisitions and partnerships, particularly with niche companies in the US, Europe, and India, and how these initiatives align with the company's growth strategy and investment capabilities?

Over the last 20 years, we have acquired over 7 companies and I can say that we were very successful in integrating the companies into Tessolve. Many of those founders continue to work with us and continue pursuing their dreams of building world-class teams. Our strategy for acquisition has been to look for like-minded teams who will augment our capabilities to provide value-added engineering solutions to our customers.

In the process, we built a solid company with comprehensive end-to-end capabilities spanning from Chip Design, Test and Product Engineering, and Embedded system design.

We operate in 10 different countries and we are continuing to look for highly capable engineering teams capable of delivering turnkey engineering solutions, especially in Europe and the U.S regions.

How does Tessolve plan to continue contributing to India's semiconductor self-reliance while maintaining its global collaborations and recognition?

Whatever we do in India has to be world-class and should cater to the global market. That has been Tessolve’s motto all the time. Over 80% of the top 10 semiconductor product companies use our engineering expertise. We will continue to invest in growing our engineering capabilities and invest in world-class tools and infrastructure. In that process, we look forward to helping the ecosystem in India as well. We look forward to partnering with all the upcoming semiconductor ventures in India to accelerate their growth.