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Vipin V. Nair

THE San Jose, California-based GDA Technologies is the quintessential start-up in the Silicon Valley, founded by Indians. The company is engaged in electronic design services and specialises in embedded, networking and consumer electronic designs.

This privately held company has developed products in areas of networking, digital video, Internet appliances and handheld solutions. GDA Tech has set up offshore development centres in Chennai and Bangalore and plans to ramp up these centres in the coming months.

In an exclusive interview to Business Line, Mr A.G. Karunakaran, President, spoke about the company's strategies and future plans. Excerpts:

How did GDA Tech manage to survive the tech wreck? What were the strategies the company adopted in that phase?

We hired more sales personnel to have more legs on the streets. This increased the deal flows (whatever was available) and therefore more customers.

We took on all kind of projects, whether they were smaller in size, or in new horizontals and verticals. We targeted the available resources to create intellectual property (IP) blocks, which are now beginning pay off. Our IP portfolio has doubled over the course of the downturn.

Did you have to completely change your strategies once the slowdown began to affect the technology industry? Did you have to cut costs by laying off people, etc?

Not a lot, but we started to pay attention to the expenses in minute detail and controlled the cash outflow prudently. The entire team took fewer vacations looking for opportunities to engage with the customers.

We decided not to let go of people, which has been a common approach taken by a lot of US-based companies. But we took other measures such as pay cut, reduced benefits, hiring freeze, etc. End result: 2002 is behind us and we are already in the growth mode.

Did you have to take a relook at your focus areas ?

GDA is into the electronics design services and intellectual property licensing business serving the communication, computing, embedded and digital video markets. We design electronics and embedded software (chips, boards, firmware, device drivers, OS) using our IP portfolio, reference designs and standard products.

We took advantage of the downturn and created more IP/reference design portfolio. Our teams in the US and India worked together well in the creation of the IPRs. We now have a competitive advantage over other US companies that could not invest in R&D.

How are you leveraging on the outsourcing advantage India is offering? What are the plans in this regard?

Since 2000, we have consistently invested in our Indian operations, which have grown significantly in terms of both headcount and infrastructure. The cost structure in India allows us to get more results for the dollars we spent on R&D.

We cater to the US, European, Asian and Indian markets with the delivery teams in India, while continuing to invest in the IP portfolio development. The 24x7 product development is possible with our presence in India. The Linux talent here has given more opportunity to create embedded solutions using Linux as a platform.

Where do you see GDA Tech in the next 3-5 years?

We are on the road to becoming a $50-million plus company by growing our services and IP businesses in that time frame. It may be sooner, with some external investments coming in and recovery in the global spending round the corner.

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