President India - VSLI/Chip areas

Contact Rajeev at rajeev.vasudeva@ezi.net . The position could be at Delhi, Hyderabad or Pune.

We are currently working on finding the Head of Product Development in India (President India) for one of the large semiconductor companies. The company is engaged in embedded software, VLSI design and other wireless broadband access areas. I was keen to seek your advice on potential candidates for this role, who could either be based in India or overseas. The company currently employs 350 people and is in the process of ramping it up to about 1000 people in the next 18 months. The ultimate intention is to have over 50% of the global R&D resources in India, making India the key development site for the company. (further details as below).

We are typically seeking a high calibre general manager, either presently in the US or in India, who have a technical background but over the years has progressed into a more managerial or leadership role. The individual would need to build the internal networks and relationships and will also be responsible for building the company's external image in India within industry circles as well as Universities, etc. Typically, we imagine the individual would come from companies like TI, Cisco, Infineon, Analog Devices, HP, IBM, Cadence, ST Microelectronics, AMD, Lucent, etc. Depending on the size of operations of the target company, our target individuals would be in significant technical leadership roles or possibly even country management roles.


Company profile:

Our client is a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops and markets solutions for the digital home and enterprise markets. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and is headquartered in USA. India is an integral part of the company's product development efforts and a third of the company's product development resources are expected to be based in India over the short term. The company has 350 employees in India spread over 3 locations and has plans to grow at a rapid pace, with the expectation that the staff strength will increase to 750-1000 employees by the end of 2006.

Key Priorities:

The President will be the company's top executive in the country, responsible for executing on the company's global engineering strategy to build and develop a world-class product development capability in India. The President, India Operations will be responsible for serving and catering to the needs of each of the four business units in the US and partnering them for their product and service requirements as well as for VLSI design. The incumbent will be the single focal point for product development and will be responsible for mentoring, motivating and leading a highly qualified team of engineers and functional managers. The President will be the external face of the company and will need to manage relationships with the Govt, Universities and other industry associations.


Position profile:

The individual in this role should ideally be a seasoned leader of technical people who also has the breadth and potential to operate as a General Manager. While the individual should have the ability to empathise with the technical challenges, he is not expected to be a domain expert. The ideal candidate would have an excellent understanding of the Indian Technology industry and would have the stature and credibility to build a solid foundation for the company's presence in India.

The ideal candidate would have about 15-20 years in management/technology leadership positions in a product development environment. We could also look at candidates beyond the chip design and semiconductor area to include organisations in the systems software and embedded space. The incumbent would need to have stature and credibility within the industry so as to be able to attract high quality professionals to the team. He/she should also have well established networks in the industry and with the leading universities in India to support the talent growth needs of the organisation.

Egon Zehnder International
Office : (91/11) 2656 43 20 / 2686 46 63
Fax : (91/11) 2685 41 43
e-mail : rajeev.vasudeva@ezi.net