IP exchange forum being set up to build India brand

Monday, 23 December 2002, 20:30 IST   |    3 Comments
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BANGALORE: With the new mantra of collaborate and compete, several information technology companies are coming together to set up an intellectual property (IP) exchange forum in a bid to build the India brand. The forum, which is finalising its draft to tackle legal implications of sharing information of IP, is being initially set up in India's tech capital before expanding it to the rest of the country. "It will be a promotional body like the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom). A do's and don'ts of the forum is in its final stages. But the response has been tremendous," Sridhar Mitta, India's best known R & D engineer and CEO of e4e Labs, told IANS. India's electronic design sector, including system software, chip design and hardware and software design recorded exports of $1 billion last year. The country's tech capital is also the capital for the electronic design sector. "The idea is to build the India brand by collaborating and competing simultaneously," S. Janakiraman, president, technology practice, MindTree Consulting, said. "For instance, MindTree Consulting is focused on short range wireless. But if we have a client who wants DSP (digital signal processing) also, I need not waste time. I should be able to collaborate with another Indian company to meet my client's requirement," he said. Mitta and Janakiraman were speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of the Indian Electronic Design Forum 2002, organised by Cadence Systems, on the "Indian design industry and the road ahead". The idea of an exchange came about after the forum's 2001 meeting. The move comes in the wake of several multinational companies setting up shop in the U.S. but keeping the back-end in India to develop IP because Indian costs are low, not cheap. The initiative of the MNCs has now matured with one of them developing a product line at its facility in Bangalore that is worth $1.5 billion annually. "India can be the IP capital globally if there is collaboration between industry and academia as well as industry and industry to take designs to the rest of the world. In the short term, we have made a dent in design services," P. Sridhar, CEO, Controlnet India, Goa, told the forum. And, in the mid term, "we need to capitalise on IP by focusing on key areas or domain expertise of each company and collaborating to take on more assignments," Sridhar added. "We need to outsource among ourselves just like our foreign customers outsource to India. We are well positioned to go beyond services into IP and products and the road ahead depends upon our willingness to collaborate among ourselves while competing among ourselves," said Janakiraman. "The total opportunity in design services alone, globally, is around $20 billion and it is billions of dollars more in embedded software. And, investment is not a constraint in this area if the teams are good because in the next three to four years, a lot of IP ideas are expected out of India," Sandip Singhal of West Bridge Capital Partners said.
Source: IANS
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