Dr. S S Mahant-Shetti, Managing Director, Karnataka Microelectronic Training/Design Center got the TechnoMentor – Semiconductors award.

He is not just a trainer but the enabler of Indian electronics and semiconductor industry in highly innovative ways.

Dr. Mahant is training 10th standard pass out students directly in VLSI design. They are trained in such a way that the VLSI and electrical/electronics engineering jargons are explained in highly creative manner, that too in the regional language. Example: Explaining the voltage and current relationship using a bucket of water.

Read more about him and his work:

Karmic Nesargi makes dreams come true

Nesargi Chips Calling Anyone

Vayavya Labs focuses on providing tools that enhance the productivity of embedded system designers and programmers.

Others include Chella Software, Madurai; Think Furniture Technologies, Rudrapur; ZNet Technologies , Jaipur; Indusface Consulting, Vadodara; Elan Emerging Technologies, Ahmedabad; Vayavya Labs, Belgaum; and Atline Technologies, Salem.

The Deloitte Tech Fast 50 India saw 31 new entrants in this year’s list. In 2008, 27 companies were in the Rs 100-crore revenue category; this year it is down to 12 companies. About 38% of the companies were in the below Rs 50-crore category in 2008; that has gone up to 62% this year.

Vayavya Labs recently got a USD 1 million funding from investors.

Chipmaker Intel’s global investment arm Intel Capital has announced an investment of $20 million in six Indian companies. Three of these investments – Saankhya Labs, TestingCzars and FINO – have been completed while investment agreements have been signed with What’s On India, enStage and DURON Energy. Specific investment details were not disclosed but sources said majority of the funding was towards Saankhya Labs.

Set up in 2007, Saankhya is a Bangalore-based fabless semiconductor company that has developed a software-defined radio app which can be used in all televisions (and not just Smart TVs) for improved functionality. This is the first semiconductor product company that the chipmaker’s investment arm has backed in India.

Saankhya is developing World’s First Software-Defined Universal Demodulator IC for Digital and Analog TV reception. Saankhya’s solutions solve this problem in a unique way. Their solution decreases the cost of a regional TV set as well as the cost of manufacturing a world TV receiver.

Parag Naik who is currently the CTO and co-founder Saankhya Labs did his schooling from St.Pauls high school and then his engineering (CS) from Gogte Institute of technology (1992).

Parag has over 16 years of industry experience, which includes product development, system/software architecture and management. He was the co-founder and CTO of Smart Yantra, a media streaming IP and Systems Company. At Smart Yantra he conceived and architected the world’s first Video over WiFi system solution. Smart Yantra was acquired by Genesis Microchip in 2004. He also co-founded Vayavya labs, an ESL company in 2006, where he is currently a Board Member. At Ishoni Networks he was one of the key architects of the world’s first Gateway on Chip solution. At Philips Research and Consumer Electronics he was instrumental in defining software and system architectures for a range of Analog and Digital TV products. He has filed 3 US patents.

The KSSIDC and its foresight gave Belgaum an IT(Information Technology) park way back in 2008-09. It was an ambitious project to begin with on 41 Acres 19 guntas land at Desur on Belgaum – Panaji Road (about 500 Mtrs. off NH).

The 42 odd acres of land that has been used for this park has now all the basic amenities required like roads, water etc. The road leading to the park been also made. Till date there have been no takers for this and this entire 42 acres is lying un utilized.

Since only a few applications were received from the IT fraternity, the KSSIDC is now planning to give away part of the land to NON IT industries.

A few local companies have applied for land in the said IT park and the IT park is now no better than a grazing ground and it has only roads and cattle grazing around.

The IT companies under the banner of IT BELGAUM will submit a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner, Belgaum Chamber of Commerce & Industries, The District Industrial Council (DIC) and also to the MD of KSSIDC urging them not to allot any land for Non IT companies.

“The IT park could be a boon for Belgaum if it was properly planned and executed, but the as there is no IT infrastructure set up as of now not many companies would be really interested in setting up shop there”, says Sandeep Hegde of DotCord IT solutions. The land has been reserved for IT and should be used for IT only is the demand of the local IT companies.

R K Patil, CEO Vayavya Labs says, “ We have waited for so long now and why cant we wait for some more time and the KSSIDC should project the Park in other cities and tell the world about the advantages of setting up shop here.” he further said, “As of today there is no other infrastructure other than roads, where as for IT we need communication/Connectivity as the major infrastructure. After opening our office if we dont get connectivity we would be useless.

After years of pursuance and efforts was now seen that few IT companies had shown interest in setting up shop at Belgaum which could have made a nascent start. However it looks govt now is bent on nipping the IT in bud!

“Slip between the cup and lip.”

Yes that seems to be the case at least with the IT- park of Belgaum. Another case to show how Govt. Projects envisaged get hijacked for a cause that benefits few vested interests that rule the masses.

Co-promoted in 2006 by a team of four engineers with extensive industry expertise – RK Patil, CEO (Belgaum); Venugopal Kolathur, CTO; Uma Bondada, VP Engineering and Parag Naik, who along with RK Patil also serves on the Board–Vayavya Labs counts global Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Tool Vendors and large Systems Design Houses for its EDA adjunct tools to architect solutions.

By using Vayavya tools its customers can optimize time, effort and cost involved in Embedded Software Design & Development. Currently, Vayavya has about 20 engineers supporting this area. Vayavya Labs’ software facilities in Belgaum and Bangalore are staffed with about 70 professionals.

CEO RK Patil, who has an in-depth knowledge of the Embedded Software and extensive relationships with industry, said, “Vayavya Labs aims to build a valuable Indian company in the System Design Tools and Services and leverage the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) space in the US.”

“Vayavya tools play a pivotal role in adding value by cutting down development, testing and debugging time at customer end thereby meeting the goal for go- to-market,” said Indian Angel Network member Sharad Sharma.
Vayavya Labs, has established the first automated device driver tool that minimizes the system development, validation and migration cycle times significantly and helps user organisations make significant recurring savings in cost and time.

“In Vayavya Labs we found a differentiated business venture with a product that translates into savings for its customers. IAN is happy to play a role in this critical skill-starved area of the software industry,” says Vivek Raghavan, a member of Indian Angel Network who along with Sharad Sharma has been a mentor to Vayavya.
IAN investors invest in ventures that have uniquely differentiated propositions, high quality execution teams and large markets. In Vayavya, Indian Angel Network found passionate founders and a well-thought out, scalable model post
IAN mentoring. The niche product development plan that Vayavya is working on will make it a significant player in the growing IP led market.

With the Vayavya deal, Indian Angel Network’s investments have now touched a landmark number of 25. Indian Angel Network comprises the who’s who of successful Indian entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs passionate about entrepreneurship and keen to leverage their strategic advice and large networks to build world class companies.

Vayavya’s Services Business is focused on providing integration services, design services and solutions around Digital TV, IPTV and Set Top Box domain.

Vayavya Labs, counts technology leaders –Trident, Synopsys, NDS and Electra Plc — among its customers.

TiE Bangalore played the critical catalyst role of bringing IAN and Vayavya together.

Vayavya Labs has established key alliances and industry partnership with industry leaders, including ARM Connected Community, Cadence System Realisation Alliance and Microsoft Windows Embedded Partner.

Very few investments have been made in EDA/ESL technology space in India in the last two decades. Vayavya’s development centre in Belgaum is perhaps the only in Electronic System Level Design technology to be located in a Tier-II city.

Bredboard has been founded by two passionate individuals Dr. Ameet Patil & Mr. Manjunath Hadli who believe that most of the undergraduate students have immense potential, but lack the edge and luster that is needed in the Software Industry today. While most of us learn technology in a uni-directional way, the Industry on the other hand needs a ready individual who can attack a given problem from multiple angles.

Bredboard hopes to cater to this divide by (1) providing the students with the tools that are relevant to the Software Industry, (2) enabling the common sense element rather than the ‘awe of technology’, and (3) equipping the students with all the paraphernalia associated with an engineering problem starting from scratch to a full blown industry-grade solution. While maintaining a high quality delivery, we also hope to make the training programs a lively, practical oriented and a fun filled experience.

Dr. Ameet has a PhD in Embedded Systems from the University of York, UK., with vast experience in the areas embedded systems both hardware and software including home automation, real-time operating systems from companies in India and UK. He has worked on a wide variety of software solutions from avionics to automotive and telecom. He has extensively traveled all over the world for delivering seminars, publishing papers and technical publications in International Conferences and Journals.

Mr. Manjunath has over 12+ years of Technical and Management expertise at companies such as Intel and Texas Instruments in the areas of embedded systems, Operating Systems and Device Drivers. He is considered an expert in key areas in the semiconductor industry that include Video, Vision, and Computer Graphics. He has several patents and publications to his credit. Having taken part in the recruitment drive at major MNCs and having worked closely with new recruits, training and mentoring them into being productive Engineers has enabled him to know the need of the hour in Training.

Whats on offer?

BredBoard is particularly focusing on training in the area of Embedded Systems. To begin with we are introducing C and Java courses that form the basis of more advanced Embedded Systems courses. Once the momentum is set, we aim to introduce courses such are microcontrollers, machine vision, kernel internals and device drivers, robotics, etc. We also plan to conduct 1 day workshops in colleges and institutes all over India.

When asked how is BredBoard different from other institutes?

“BredBoard is very very different” – says Manju. Its founders are primarily attached to the Software Industry via Spundhan – a Software Company they founded in 2008. At BredBoard, the founders themselves along with the Spundhan development team will be training the students.

“They will train people on the state-of-the-art in the Industry today. BredBoard students will be mentored by people who hold a PhD. degree and/or have several years of Industry experience behind them. The examples given during training will directly relate to how your skills will be used in the industry. It is more a practical approach rather than just theory with little or no practicals at all.” – says Dr. Ameet excitedly – “and all this for a very competitive price”.

Nowhere else you will find such faculty or setup where the Industry experts themselves train the younger generations. Another advantage of such setup is – as the Industry ages/changes new advanced technology will be introduced. BredBoard, by way of Spundhan, can more adapt and quickly deliver courses for those new technologies with ease.

If the founders already have Spundhan, why BredBoard? Whats the objective?

Very valid question. We already have an existing flourishing business so why get into training with BredBoard? Actually, to be honest, it kind of fell in place automatically for us. Post recession the Industry is more matured now. Be it the hiring process or the employee appraisal process – everything is being looked at from a cost point of view.

Software Industry today is heavily lacking skilled labor and is spending millions on training new hires. What the Industry would rather want is to hire an already trained ready resource who is productive from day one than recruit him/her and then spend expensive time, energy and most of all money in training them expecting that they will be productive ASAP.

With Indian IT industry starting to get into the start-up culture, there are now more start-ups every nook and corner than you would see a couple of years back. These start-ups cannot spare their time in training and definitely need skilled and ready resources to hire.

Our aim is to plug this space by (1) training our students on the current Industry requirements, and (2) either hire them ourselves or place them in other companies with whom we have close relations via Spundhan.

Going forward we are also planning to take up custom tailer-made courses on behalf of our client to train fresh resources to a specific technology, screen them by pre-interviews and then let them be absorbed by the client for full-time employment. This would save the client a massive amount of time, money and effort spent in recruitment and training. We are already in talks with some of our clients on these lines. All-in-all BredBoard could soon introduce job-oriented courses.

Who is it for? How to join a course?

BredBoard does not have any restrictions on eligibility. We will prepare courses that will cater to a wider range of students right from school to degree level and also to software professional who are already working in the industry and need to polish their skills. Each category of students will be made into a separate batch and the course delivery will be accordingly adapted to match the appropriate level.

Current courses: C and Java that are on offer are mainly aimed towards all undergraduate students pursuing diploma, BCA, BSc, BE in any field who have a flare for Software Programming.

One can join a course by simply filling a small form on our website: www.bredboard.com or by calling our office number: 0831-4203291/9916257006 (Ameet)/9743708383 (Manju) or by visiting our office anytime between 10:00am to 6:00pm (Mon to Sat).

www.bredboard.com

AAB EXCLUSIVE OFFER:

First five people who comment on BredBoard article with the words

“I am interested in BredBoard “

will get 25% discount on registering a BredBoard course.
Non-transferable.

Kindly provide a valid email address in the comment for verification.

The first five commentors

baruah.biswajit3 [at] gmail.com
vijaypatil.82[at] ymail.com
varunkarkhanis[at]yahoo.com
chiraag.102[at]gmail.com
c4chaitanya[at]yahoo.co.in

Registration fee for NON-GITians is Rs.800

Get yourself to Computer Center Lab 120, KLS GIT on Saturday morning and stick around till the next evening as there will be plenty of exciting and interesting things to be done and discussed.

Only 30 seats available on First Come First Serve basis and there are also some goodies to be got as every attendee will walk away with a resource CD and Certificate.

The event showcases all the brands under one roof and one can see latest technology.

The IT expo will have something for each one, from classes, Laptop accessories, Mobiles, Anti virus softwares, Server solutions, Internet dongles, Laptops, desktops, web designing firms and some latest gyan sessions organized over the next three days. This time there are a lot of stalls and good deals can also be struck.

This IT expo will be a place for all to visit once and see what all new tings have come in the market and ofcourse for those who need Gyan, look out for the Gyan sessions.

The Gyan sessions will be an added feather to the IT EXPO as not only people need to see hardware but also understand the latest trends in IT and all for free.

On 27^th February at 11 am Mr.Rajendra Pai will spell bound you with some great words on “Cloud computing made simple” This will not have any jargon and will be suitable for all.

On 28^th February at 11am ,Mr.Swapneel Patnekar will tell you “How to be a open source Hacker”.

Same day on On 28^th February at 3pm Mr.Sandeep Hegde will give you tips for “Making money online to monetizing the web”. This session will give you an idea of how a website can make money and how you can make money from a website.

On March 1, Uday Kinjawadekar (Editor of AAB) will speak on “Social media the next big thing”. This session is useful for all ages and businessmen, students just anyone. He would share insights how one site can make a difference using social media.

Winners of IT Expo quiz

The wait is over here are the names of the winners of the IT EXPO quiz.

Quiz 1:

SHOAIB MOHAMMED SHAHAPURI

Pavan Appugol

Miss Pooja Sidnale picked up the lucky winners.

Quiz 2:

Prashant Girennavar

Kumar Halijol

Swatee Jog picked up the lucky winners of Quiz 2.

Quiz 3:

Rahul Vanahalli

Anis Mulla

Uday Deshpande picked up the Lucky winners of Quiz 3.

Winners will be awarded with their prizes at the IT Expo Valedictory function to be held on 1^st March, 2011 at the IT EXPO at Millennium Gardens. An email/sms will follow with details.

Rotary Club of Venugram-Belgaum in association with Concept Exhibitors have organised an IT EXPO-11 at Millennium gardens.

This IT EXPO-11 is focused on creating the end customer awareness about various IT products available today under one roof and for the first time interactive session would be held at the venue to showcase the new technologies and need of IT by eminent IT professionals from Belgaum.

In run up to the event, AAB gives you chance to win some great goodies, to win you need to just answer the Three Quiz series correctly. TWO winners from each quiz will be awarded.

Terms & conditions:

1. Winners will be announced on 26^th February, 2011 and winners will be selected on random.
   The Prizes will be awarded at the valedictory function to be held at the IT EXPO Belgaum. The decision of IT EXPO organizers will be final and no arbitration would be entertained. No cash claim or exchange can be made in lieu of the prize. Prizes must be accepted as awarded and are non-assignable and non-transferable.

2. In all 2 winners will be chosen randomly whose all answers are correct for each quiz. No other charges will be borne by the organizers.

3. Winners will have to get the code they get in their winning email and they will have to also give out their Secret code they entered while participating. If the Secret code does not tally the prizes will not be given. Secret code has to match with the one entered by the person while filling the form.

4. AllAboutBelgaum.com by no means can be held responsible for any matter concerned with the prizes or the event. AllAboutBelgaum.com does not have any pecuniary interest in the event or with the organizers.

5. AllAboutBelgaum.com is doing this online promotion only as an online media partner and has nothing to do with the event or the bands or the event on a whole.

6. The persons submitting their answers online will be assumed that they have read the terms and conditions.

7. AllAboutBelgaum.com shall not be liable for any loss or damage whatsoever that may be suffered or any personal injury that may be suffered as a result of participating in the contest or using the prize.

8. Each participant who submits his entry, consents to the information being entered into the database and right to use by AllAboutBelgaum.com and its affiliates, in any media for future promotional, marketing and publicity purposes without any further reference or payment or compensation to the entrant.

9. These terms and conditions may be amended without prior notice.

Rotary Club of Venugram-Belgaum in association with Concept Exhibitors have organised an IT EXPO-11 at Millennium gardens.

This IT EXPO-11 is focused on creating the end customer awareness about various IT products available today under one roof and for the first time interactive session would be held at the venue to showcase the new technologies and need of IT by eminent IT professionals from Belgaum.

In run up to the event, AAB gives you chance to win some great goodies, to win you need to just answer the Three Quiz series correctly. TWO winners from each quiz will be awarded.

Terms & conditions:

1. Winners will be announced on 26^th February, 2011 and winners will be selected on random.
   The Prizes will be awarded at the valedictory function to be held at the IT EXPO Belgaum. The decision of IT EXPO organizers will be final and no arbitration would be entertained. No cash claim or exchange can be made in lieu of the prize. Prizes must be accepted as awarded and are non-assignable and non-transferable.

2. In all 2 winners will be chosen randomly whose all answers are correct for each quiz. No other charges will be borne by the organizers.

3. Winners will have to get the code they get in their winning email and they will have to also give out their Secret code they entered while participating. If the Secret code does not tally the prizes will not be given. Secret code has to match with the one entered by the person while filling the form.

4. AllAboutBelgaum.com by no means can be held responsible for any matter concerned with the prizes or the event. AllAboutBelgaum.com does not have any pecuniary interest in the event or with the organizers.

5. AllAboutBelgaum.com is doing this online promotion only as an online media partner and has nothing to do with the event or the bands or the event on a whole.

6. The persons submitting their answers online will be assumed that they have read the terms and conditions.

7. AllAboutBelgaum.com shall not be liable for any loss or damage whatsoever that may be suffered or any personal injury that may be suffered as a result of participating in the contest or using the prize.

8. Each participant who submits his entry, consents to the information being entered into the database and right to use by AllAboutBelgaum.com and its affiliates, in any media for future promotional, marketing and publicity purposes without any further reference or payment or compensation to the entrant.

9. These terms and conditions may be amended without prior notice.