And then there were the start ups.
Start ups in the EDA area are still far fewer in number than their brethren in the application software world or even the embedded software world. There were two main sources of start up activity. One source was local companies that had found a niche that they could supply tools for. In some cases, these were companies that had been providing R & D or other services, to semiconductor companies, that they were then able to package as a product. SoftJin, a company that was initially funded by Sasken, was one such example. (Peggy Aycinena, in one of her columns wrote up SoftJin and a few other start ups about two years ago and wondered where the next set of innovators would come from.)
The other source of start ups were US based companies that came to India either as an R & D location or as a HQ location because US based VCs mandated an India office before they would agree to providing any funding or financing for the start up. For a period of about a year or more, almost every start up company that came through our doors would have a slide showing the location and employee strength of their India office and of course a US presence in Silicon Valley.
Of all the companies that made it to the WallChart at that time, very few were based outside Bangalore, a phenomenon that was interesting to note because NOIDA ,Chennai and Pune were rapidly emerging as alternate destinations for tech companies.
For those who are wondering about the reference to the Wallchart in the previous section, the Wallcharts or Landscapes are a series of posters that track EDA activity by company . In their current form, the Wallcharts track companies that supply tools for the following design areas: PCB Software, IC Layout Software, RTL software and ESL software.
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