The Hindu Business Line : Flextronics invests $10 m in inSilica

Mr Ash Bharadwaj, President, ODM Products Group, Flextronics (left); Mr Anant Agrawal, CEO, InSilica; and Mr Duncan Robertson, Senior Vice-President, Design Services, Flextronics; at a press conference in Bangalore on Wednesday. - - G. R. N. Somashekar

Bangalore , April 21

ELECTRONICS manufacturing services firm Flextronics said on Wednesday that it has invested $10 million in inSilica Inc, a fabless semiconductor design company, in the second round funding. A fabless semiconductor company such as inSilica does the designing of chips but farms out the actual manufacturing.

Flextronics also said that it had expanded its silicon development capabilities by selecting inSilica as its system-on-a-chip development partner. System-on-a-chip (SoC) technology is the packaging of all necessary electronic circuits and parts for a system such as cell phone or digital camera, on a single integrated circuit (IC), generally known as a microchip.

As part of the tie-up, inSilica will provide its designing services to Flextronics and its OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners, said Mr Anant Agrawal, President and CEO, inSilica.

"With this latest funding, the company has raised a total of $20 million till date," Mr Agrawal said. inSilica had raised $10 million from NewPath Ventures last year.

Flextronics is outsourcing its silicon design services to India for the first time. "In addition to meeting our goal to expand our existing SoC solutions, we chose inSilica as our SoC partner because of its world class design capabilities, growing portfolio and access to cost effective resource in Bangalore," said Mr Ash Bharadwaj, President, Flextronics, ODM Products Group.

"We look forward to utilising their expertise in mixed signal and radio frequency design, large scale integration and advanced process technologies," he added.

InSilica has a chip-design centre in Bangalore with nearly 50 engineers. The company, which started last year, has revenues in the range of $10-$15 million.

"We are targeting a revenue of $100 million over next three years," Mr Agrawal said adding that the company expected to add about 150 engineers to its chip design team by next year-end.