POSITION PLACED: Managing Director

Executive summary

Tensilica is a private, venture-capital financed semiconductor intellectual property company headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. It is now part of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. It was founded in 1997 and currently has about 100 employees worldwide. In April ’05, Tensilica decided to set up its own subsidiary in India and required a Managing Director to kick off the process and build on the existing team.

There were challenges at several levels pertaining to this role. The profile was atypical as the requirement was for someone based in and well networked in Pune - while the technology hubs are Bangalore and Hyderabad. An exposure to US work culture as well as start-up experience was vital to manage the offshore model successfully as Tensilica’s team in the US had limited offshore experience. The candidate would have to be entrepreneurial and a self-starter, able to manage and run the center without requiring guidance. Finding talent in the semiconductor technology area is generally challenging and we required someone who was quite experienced.

AnuPartha completed this search and the company hired the India head within three months.

About Tensilica

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.

Background

Tensilica is an 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 to simultaneously explore the availability and if possible hire a senior executive to manage and lead their offshore initiative in India.

Tensilica approached AnuPartha for this purpose.

The Search Challenge – AnuPartha’s Perspective

Anu Parthasarathy

I started talking to Tensilica in Aug 2004, when they had decided on setting up an offshore engineering centre in India and were looking for someone who would head the India centre, 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. However, 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 (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 resourceful, managing and running the centre 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 successfully acquired the India head within three months of starting the search.

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Client's Feedback

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 AnuPartha, 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. AnuPartha compared favorably against these options of recruiting since they specialize in this specific area of cross-border senior executive search and 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 calibre of the candidate pipeline generated by Anu was far superior to any generated by our outsourcing partner or other recruitment methods and other 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 AnuPartha for this key hire for Tensilica.