Inside India’s growing global advantage in electronic design

Over the past 10 years, India’s information technology (IT) industry has grown to become a significant force in technology worldwide, an important part of the global innovation chain. Some industry leaders are comparing the thriving tech industry in Bangalore to the Silicon Valley in the late 1990s.

Especially in the area of engineering design, India is well‐suited to compete in the global market. The very top tier of technology companies are building development centers in India in order to draw on its collective talent pool and established base of embedded software developers and electronics designers. Companies such as Cisco Systems, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and Google are leveraging the skill sets offered by India’s recent graduates as well as those of its seasoned technology professionals, and our company, MapuSoft Technologies, is doing the same.

American manufacturing companies are also mobilizing in the country, assigning to Indian engineering firms the work of using 3D computer-simulation systems to refine the designs of everything from heavy construction equipment to car engines and aircraft wings for companies like Boeing and General Motors (GM).

India vs. China: A new leader in the race for primacy
While traditionally China has been considered the primary nation to beat in terms of industrial capability, India is fast on the rise. One reason for this is the vast pool of English-speaking workers who are well-trained at universities with a big investment in technological education, both within India and in the United States and the United Kingdom. By comparison, a large percentage of the Chinese workforce is trained to work at lower-level jobs, and very few are conversant in English.

In the mid-20th century, the Indian Institute of Technology opened its doors in West Bengal, modeling itself after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. Six other Indian Institutes of Technology were established across the country over the decade that followed and steadily began educating and training a highly skilled technological workforce.

Unlike Chinese workers, the majority of whom never leave China, many Indian technology professionals have benefited from gaining advanced education and workplace experience abroad. A large percentage of these professionals return to India and set up their own businesses or bring their expertise to permanent jobs within Indian companies.

Another reason for India’s economic leadership is that it has steadily been building a competitive advantage in engineering design. The intense growth and significant advancement in VLSI semiconductor chips and embedded software within India has driven growth in the country’s electronics design industry. Firmware and software are critical factors in determining key features as finished products and their applications have become more digital in nature.

A complete ecosystem to support the electronic design industry has arisen in India, from developers of EDA tools to board‐design companies and on throughout the supply chain of products and services. This has supported the emergence of India as the favored source for a wide variety of software development projects, chip and board design, and system design within industries including:
• Telecommunications equipment; both wired and wireless
• Industrial control products
• Computer and storage products
• Automotive electronics
• Digital consumer products
• Medical equipment
• Aerospace and military electronic products.

The MapuSoft advantage for Indian electronics design
MapuSoft Technologies operates one development center in India and one in North America for its work on United States defense projects. By having a strong technology base in India and developing the tools and services, MapuSoft is in an ideal position to help Indian design firms and high-tech universities specializing in competitive electronic design become more competitive.

The company’s focus is on creating and providing embedded-software interoperability solutions and services that enables porting of existing software systems to new platforms a simple, affordable operation. Within companies worldwide, a tremendous software investment has been made and lives on in legacy systems that can be extremely expensive to port to new platforms as technology evolves. MapuSoft’s products are simple to learn and are provided with full source code with no royalty fees, so that customers maintain complete control over their software in perpetuity.

One main advantage to easy portability is that it greatly widens the market for embedded software, making it possible to create products for new vertical markets as well as new operating systems without significant investment in migration. In addition, simplified migration speeds time-to-market for design firms, a big advantage in today’s fast-paced technology industries.

MapuSoft is also proud to “level the playing field” for smaller design firms, for whom adding expert staff every time a new operating system or platform is introduced is simply not possible given tight budgets. Bigger design firms benefit greatly from the ability to strategically protect their software investments by eliminating dependence on vendor-specific or proprietary development platforms.

But perhaps the most significant advantage from MapuSoft to the engineering design firms is that the company’s products allow them to focus on their core competencies instead of being distracted by learning new platforms. Companies that focus on what they do best always produce better products and services at a more efficient cost, and in the 21st-century economy, greater efficiency can transform a company from being one that survives, to one that thrives.


Author Information
Raj Johnson is the President and CEO of MapuSoft Technologies.