July - 2006 - issue > Last Word
The emerging Indian semicon talent search and the need to ramp up!
The Indian semiconductor and embedded design industry has revenues to the tune of $3.3 billion (2005) and employs nearly 75,000 people. This is expected to increase to revenues of $43 billion in 2015 with employment projections of over 780,000 in 2015.
Captive companies have scaled up from merely being low-cost skilled resource centers to those carrying out end-to-end activities. Another promising statistic is that design starts in India are set to rise from 600 in 2005 to 3248 in 2015!
The driving forces behind this growth is the rapidly growing domestic market, a strong education infrastructure, comparatively lower cost design talent, short product lead times, reduced entry barriers, rising government support, and improving infrastructure.
One challenge that could confront companies seeking to expand semiconductor design activities in India is the supply and demand gap for competent professionals. The pressures placed on companies to emerge successfully from a skills shortage is high at present and will only increase with time.
The challenge could reduce in the coming few years through government initiatives, better collaboration between industry and academia, higher participation of experienced professionals in training activities and greater flexibility in recruitment policies of companies.
A structured plan to pro-actively address the workforce shortage at the campus stage itself could be achieved through a combination of the following factors:
Awareness: Students and placement officers at universities need greater awareness about the sector, its companies, compensation and benefits, career options and growth.
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