elitePLUS Semiconductor Technologies: Rendering Best-in-class Verification Services Apace with Market Trends Date:   Tuesday , March 15, 2016 This is not a golden era for large service companies in the semiconductor industry, which is growing at a snail-like pace. As the number of opportunities channelled towards them has plummeted drastically, the industry is undergoing an unprecedented consolidation. On the other hand, with sharp focus, these limited opportunities are flowing towards highly talented companies, which are capable of rendering services at impeccable quality. One such company banking on these opportunities is elitePLUS Semiconductor Technologies. While even startups attempt to offer all dimensions of semiconductor chip design cycle such as front end, testing, design, verification, synthesis and back end design services, elitePLUS determined to dive deep into advanced verification to provide indomitable services at quintessential quality. As evidence look no further than the evaluation of a big Semiconductor company in Bangalore, who became elitePLUS\'s client, after it came on top as the best company for verification. It is one of the very few companies to master the recent trend - mixed signal verification, where the rapidly progressing digital technique is applied to analog verification. The elitePLUS Management The 2014 founded elitePLUS has the right blend of talent, considering that Gautam Naik (Director of Engineering - Verification) has worked in product company for 16 years, Zahir.M (Director of Engineering - Design) has worked on both design services company and product company for 17 years,and Prashanth GM (Associate Director - Business Operations) has 10 years of HR and administration experience in semiconductor industry, whereas RK (Ranganath S. Kempanahally, CEO & MD) has good exposure to running of start-up, since he has administered the Indian unit of a UK-based organization prior founding elitePLUS. \"We were brainstorming different kinds of IPs and Product ideas to work on from 2009 onwards. Later we realized that the best way to start is to leverage our primary skill set - i.e advanced verification,\" recollects RK. Unlike most service companies that commence their journey with resource augmentation model, elitePLUS kick-started its venture with managed service model - a path many startups fear to tread. \"Though we occasionally do resource augmentation, 70 percent of our team works on turnkey solutions,\" adds Gautam. Besides legal hiccups, attracting best talents was an uphill task, which has become easy now, owing to its successful track record and Elite Coffee Club, an industry wide club initiated by elitePLUS to make a difference in verification community. Different DNA As opposed to most organizations that work on top of already built verification environments, elitePLUS offers everything right from specification to coverage closure; laying keen emphasis on the development of verification environment. For clients demanding end-to-end solutions, elitePLUS collaborates with small design service houses to provide the same. Its remarkable 100 percent successful implementation rate facilitated the company to steadily grow in terms of headcount, clientele and the number of projects executed. The Bangalore headquartered company has established its offices in the UK and U.S. as well, noting that it has several mixed signal companies in those countries as its clients, besides developing white labels for EDA companies. \"Not only our clients are coming back, but most of our clients are being associated with us for a particular project and derivatives for more than a year,\" says a proud Zahir. One such case would be a US-based mixed signal company that sought elitePLUS for a IP verification. As it impressed the client by finding and fixing abundant bugs even in their working designs, elitePLUS ended up performing complete end to end verification for them involving multiple IPs and different models. The Hierarchy-less Work Milieu In this technology-driven company, there is no question of hierarchy, since everybody including the CEO is involved in architectural level. The company that successfully managed to hire over 30 talented engineers, who seek to learn from their peers, encourages them to write blogs and technical articles. \"To ensure constant growth to all individuals, we conduct a weekly training program, where everyone gets to present their ideas on a particular concept. Fostering such talents helps us to do presentations in all industry conferences in India, U.S. and Europe, despite being a young company,\" remarks Prashanth. This keeps elitePLUS up-to-date with industry trends, as they reserve time to discuss the ways to improve those learnt parameters on a daily basis. Broadening the Horizons The company\'s recently launched U.S. office will be a six people strong entity by the end of 2016. Currently creating verification IPs of its own, elitePLUS is metamorphosing into a product company. The company hopes that its first product will be published in 12 months and is honing its skills to become a subject matter expert in other segments as well.