The semiconductor market in India has transformed over the years and the industry offers high growth potential as most segments which source semiconductors as inputs are themselves witnessing high demand. To sustain this demand and to beat the giants in the industry, one requires an experienced team, who understands various technological aspects along with the changing Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) policies and state government policies. One such company which has been instrumental in building a sizable Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) talent pool is Bangalore based BlackPepper Technologies.

Incorporated in 2009, BlackPepper Technologies, a new generation System to Silicon Design Company that brings to bear diverse design capabilities provides comprehensive turnkey solutions to tier 1 & tier 3 companies. The company has more than 500 years of combined experience in the field and the management team has witnessed, participated in and shaped the complete evolutionary phase of the industry.

Being the trusted design partner for over 10 global semiconductor companies who are behemoths in the industry, Blackpepper’s differentiation lies in their quality, reliability, cost and TAT (Turn Around Time). “We assure our clients high quality, high reliability, lower cost and faster TAT compared to any of our competitors. We have developed a complex patented technology framework called EYWA, which provides us significant edge over our competitors,” says Jei Narayanan, COO, BlackPepper Technologies.

Transforming Ideas into Tangible Products

After its inception in 2009, Team Blackpepper took about three years to build the initial plan, technological platform and process. Once the platform

was ready, they started growing 2 to3 times year on year. At present, the company is leveraging on their two innovative frameworks - namely, EYWA & LTE. Throwing light on EYWA, Manoj Sundareswaran, EVP, BlackPepper Technologies, who was a key contributor in Infineon India’s Engineering division, says, “EYWA, our home-grown technology framework, simply removes sub optimality from the design process. This is what plagues the design process in many of our competitors. EYWA is a unique combination of various technology components that consolidates principles of network protocols, human capability mapping and physical resource modeling into one single integrated platform. This brings forth a product (be it hardware, software, silicon or an actual end product) with higher quality, lower cost and gets realized predictably on time.”

Taking pride in an impressive average employee experience of 6.5 years, the company addresses the industry’s biggest ARM (Acquire, Retain & Motivate) nightmare with its Lean Tall Engineering (LTE) talent transformation framework. This helps BlackPepper to transform an ordinary design engineer to an architect level. “Our LTE framework allows two of our engineers to (say), design a semiconductor block far better and quicker, which typically takes five engineers in other companies,” explains Jei Narayanan, COO, BlackPepper Technologies. Besides offering a wonderful compensation package and inculcating a vibrant culture, the company keeps its 150+ people motivated by providing them niche high-end critical projects, thereby converting yet another challenge into an opportunity.

Built on Human Values

BlackPepper is visibly proud of its reputation as a quiet ‘No nonsense company’ in its segment and is built on human values rather than conventional corporate priorities. Each one of them (alias Pepperite) has strong engineering capabilities, passion for excellence and above all is a fine human being. For BlackPepper, every Pepperite comes first, and for every Pepperite, the customer comes first. “We believe in the philosophy of collective entrepreneurship

and encourage every single Pepperite to think freely, innovate tirelessly, question fearlessly and be deeply involved in every facet of the BlackPepper success story. Moreover, our management team comes with deep knowledge on various subjects spanning technology, innovation, business, market, strategy and their diverse and complementary skill-sets enable the delivery of outcomes that are non-linearly impactful,” avers Hari Krishnan Puravankara, Founder & CEO, BlackPepper.

Road to Success

BlackPepper has travelled a long way from where it had started and with a constant and conscious focus on minimal equity dilution has ensured that they stay true to their charter and vision they had set for themselves. “We have used hybrid debt funding along with earned revenue to grow the company year on year, more than 2-3 times. We are aiming to grow exponentially further with system design turnkey solutions,” states Basavaraj Nagaraju, EVP- Strategy & Marketing, BlackPepper Technologies.

BlackPepper is the trusted design partner for global top 10 semiconductor companies

BlackPepper, currently operating in India, Singapore, and Taiwan has plans of expanding in the USA. The company has been successful in delivering high-end semiconductor solutions by building, nurturing and developing high-performance teams. Their world-class engineering talent is handpicked from top semiconductor companies across the world. However, to be successful in BlackPepper, one must have strong engineering capabilities and a passion for excellence. Undoubtedly, the company is focused on providing differentiated products & engineering capabilities for global semiconductor companies and is poised to become USD 1Bn valued Company by 2021.