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Tensilica is a private, venture-capital
financed semiconductor intellectual property company
headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. It was founded
in 1997 and has currently around 100 employees
worldwide. Tensilica licenses configurable and
extensible embedded processor technology to the
leading system, ASSP, and ASIC suppliers of the
world. Tensilica's technology includes hardware
as well as a complete suite of software tools
for the configured processor.
Tensilica is a very engineering-and-technology
focused company. Due to its intellectual property
business model, Tensilica relies on intensive,
sustained leading-edge technological innovation
by its engineers. During the downturn of 2001
and 2002, the company's engineering budget could
not be increased much but their business was slowly
but surely growing. With this growth in the market,
Tensilica needed to invest in increasing the ease-of-use
and robustness of their products, while at the
same time maintaining the pace of technological
innovation, given the fierce competition in the
market.
To address these engineering capacity issues,
Tensilica decided to explore low-cost offshore
engineering resources to supplement the engineering
team in Santa Clara, CA.
Tensilica underwent a detailed process of evaluating
alternative offshore models. The models evaluated
were: outsourcing to a partner, setting up a subsidiary,
acquisition, and BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer).
While evaluating these options, Tensilica felt
the need to simultaneously explore the availability
and if possible hire a senior executive to manage
and lead their offshore initiative in India.
Tensilica approached
Global Executive Talent for this purpose.
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Anu Parthasarathy
I started talking to Tensilica in Aug 2004, when
they had decided on having an offshore engineering
center in India and were looking for someone who
would head the India center and build and run it,
including hiring engineers and creating a high-quality
team.
We started the search process immediately and Tensilica
evaluated a few promising candidates. But Tensilica
then took the decision to go with an outsourcing
partner and engage in a BOT model with them, building
towards transferring ownership to Tensilica of this
team over the course of 18 months or so.
In April '05 Tensilica decided to setup their own
subsidiary and needed to hire a Managing Director
to start the process and build upon the team that
was already there. The profile required for the
Tensilica India Head was not typical. We needed
someone who would be willing to work in Pune (while
the technology hubs of India are Bangalore and Hyderabad),
and be comfortable and well networked in that city
to be able to build a high quality local engineering
team there. Tensilica's team in the US has practically
no offshore experience, therefore an extensive US
and start-up experience in the candidate was also
required, as this person would need to work closely
with the Tensilica US engineering team and manage
the offshore model and make it work. He needed to
be entrepreneurial and a self-starter, managing
and running the center without requiring any handholding.
Also, this person needed experience in Tensilica's
specific area of technology; finding talent in the
semiconductor technology area is relatively tougher
than in other areas of technology.
We completed this search and the company hired the
India head within three months of starting the search.
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Ashish
Dixit, Vice President of Hardware Engineering,
Tensilica
I was first referred to Anu
Parthasarathy by an India-based outsourcer we
were talking to in our process of exploring the
offshore model.
Before talking to Global Executive Talent, we
had been looking at candidates through our own
contacts and had built a small pipeline. Also,
we had talked to a few senior executive recruiters
based out of India for the purpose. GET compared
favorably against these options of recruiting
since they specialize in this specific area of
cross-border senior executive search and also
they are available locally for us to have discussions
with and manage the search and recruitment process.
Also Anu came highly recommended from other entrepreneurs
and executives in the Silicon Valley.
We started working with Anu on hiring an India
Head in Aug '04, but decided towards the end of
2004 to go with the BOT model instead. In June
'05 we decided to hire our own person to begin
setting up our subsidiary and to complete the
transfer out of our partner.
One thing about Anu that impressed me a lot was
her emphasis on structured and thorough processes.
Initially Anu spent a lot of time in discussions
with me and with several others in the senior
team here at Tensilica, Santa Clara, to get a
very good understanding of the requirements of
the profile. She also spent time understanding
our area of technology to get a better feel of
the experience required of the candidate.
Secondly, the resumes that came to us were thoroughly
vetted out and were very good matches to the required
profile. Anu also added her own views on each
candidate, which helped us a lot in the process
of shortlisting candidates.
As a result the quality and caliber of the candidate
pipeline generated by Anu was far superior to
any generated by our outsourcing partner or other
recruitment methods and options we had explored
in the past.
We recruited the candidate
of our choice in early Aug '05 and have been very
satisfied with him. I am glad we worked with Global
Executive Talent and Anu for this key hire for
Tensilica.
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