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Anjali Prayag

Tessolve Services, a semiconductor chip testing company, has a training programme to make students industry-ready by the time they graduate.

D Balakumar, Project Manager, Test Engineering, at Tessolve Services, in his 30s, is a veteran of the industry. Having been part of the semiconductor industry even before the word `fab' became fashionable, Balu (as he's known at Tessolve) recalls the `hard days' when he graduated from a polytechnic college in Chennai and was looking for a job.

"In 1992, when I was fresh in the job market, `semicon' was virtually unheard of and a very small industry," he says, quickly adding, "By 2010, it's expected to be worth about $40 billion."

What makes Balu swell with pride is the opportunities the semicon industry and his company, Tessolve Services, provide for engineers, non-engineers, skilled and unskilled workers — unlike the software sector, which employs only engineers.

"Once the development work is over and the industry gets into mass production, there will be a great demand for ITI holders and candidates who have passed Plus 2, to manage the manufacturing flow," explains Balu.

In his opinion, every engineer would require 40 operators to manage the show.

As it stands now, the Indian semiconductor industry is only just emerging from its cocoon and Tessolve, a Bangalore-based semicon chip testing company, already employs the largest number of test engineers in the world: 50.

Says Naresh Bala, Chief Mentor, Tureeya Corp, a consultant who helps employees at Tessolve get on to the learning path, "There are over half-a-million software engineers in the country and only about 250 testing engineers and out of this 50 are working here."

The story of the fab industry in the country revolves around people like Balu and five others who moved from Singapore to Bangalore. From 1995 to 2004, Balu worked in a hardware design testing firm in Singapore.

"I came back after 10 years and saw the software boom and was convinced that if India can do it in software development, then semicon chip testing and manufacturing will be the next big area."

Though chip design is still the preserve of large MNCs such as Intel and Texas Instruments, the testing of the chip is largely outsourced.

Balu says there are close to 250 chip testing houses in the country. "And they are investing huge amounts of money in testing equipment. Each machine is worth around $1.7 million and here at Tessolve alone we have equipment worth more than $10 million."

Talking about the talent crunch that is disturbing the industry now, Balu says though talent is the issue here, the bigger problem is that of training. Tessolve's bedrock talent comprising the six people hastogether developed a training programme where students are made industry-ready by the time they graduate.

"Our overseas experience really helped us here," says Balu.

Says V. Veerappan, Co-founder and Director, Tessolve, "The Tessolve Centre for Innovation and Learning trains fresh graduates to face the client within a year of joining the company." This means Tessolve training starts three months before they graduate.

Tessolve is also actively participating in curricula design and educating graduates on the career prospects in the industry.

S. Yogan, Director, Test Engineering, Tessolve, is particular that they have to reach beyond the mainstream colleges for their talent hunt.

Is it difficult to convince budding hardware engineers to get into this nascent sector when a well-established software sector is rolling out the red carpet for them?

"Not really. You'll be surprised to know that there are a good number of Indian engineers who want to put their hardware engineering skills to test.

They would get bored in a software job just clocking hours," Balu quips.

Tessolve is currently working on 8-10 patents in the chip testing area and hopes to have the company name attached to all of these in the next one year. "We want to have at least 250 testing engineers by end 2007 and are working towards making Tessolve a knowledge hub for chip testing," states Balu.

anjali@thehindu.co.in

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