OUTSTANDING CATEGORY
P Raja Manickam
Founder & CEO
Raja Manickam founded Tessolve in 2004 with a vision to create a engineering and productization company in electronics and semiconductors. He brings a unique mix of experience encompassing the entire chip development process, from managing product lines, running a manufacturing site and building up start-ups. This experience allowed him to build Tessolve to bridge the gaps he saw in the development cycle of silicon and systems engineering. Starting his career as a Test Engineer in Texas Instruments he moved on to Fairchild, National Semiconductor, DTS and Viko test labs. He was also involved in the early start-up of STATS and UTAC.
In his vibrant 30-year career, he held engineering, product line, sales and marketing responsibilities. He is alumni of RI in Singapore and B.Tech(hons) IIT Kharagpur. It is hard for any of us to muster up courage to chase the dream of our lives. But that is exactly what Raja Manickam Founder and CEO of Tessolve did, by quitting his cozy job at the age of 48; only to follow his passion of establishing a company that eliminates the inefficiency in Semiconductor and Systems Productization.
Having worked with giants like Texas Instruments, as well as emerging start-ups like STATS, when they were just established, Raja gained the knowledge of all aspects of product line activity from scratch. He had unique qualification of working in Product Lines, in captive factories in operations and engineering and outsourced OSAT factories. Although his forte is in engineering, he was involved in setting up Sales and Marketing offices and driving them to billion-dollar organizations. He had developed methodologies to increase efficiency and reduce time to market. He believed this business model can be scaled in Asia with the availability and depth of engineering in India and SE Asian countries. Besides, Asia is the fastest growing region in the electronics sector. Raja got his initial experience from TI Singapore which was a tough manufacturing environment in the 80’s. This was his foundation to learn on how companies are run. While he was in US and other countries, he continued to nurture his network in Singapore and SE Asia. He took the leap with the support of his wife, “If you think you are smart enough to start a company, just go for it,” after which he never looked back. People People gravitate towards Raja due to his gregarious nature and ability to empathize with people and their issues.
“Being a hands-on guy, who encourages innovation, Raja makes it a point to get in touch with the freshers at every quarterly meeting and loves to take up the dais to share the story of his own hardships and success to inspire and motivate the young minds working for his company.”
The Execution
Raja, the Idealist, wanted to create a company that would be the best in what they did. He wanted to build the company “one brick at a time” by involving himself in every aspect of the company. The labs needed to be run 24/7 as the equipments were expensive and will work only with precision power. This was a major challenge in India where power is unstable and fluctuations were normal. With a clear perspective, Raja recruited young talent, trained them in the “Tessolve Way”. Although this was not the fastest way to revenue generation, he believed the core engineering must have “Tessolve DNA.” Empowering young engineers, creating an environment where innovation can thrive and there is no fear is key to success of Tessolve.
Since Tessolve was breaking new grounds and pioneering the concept of productization, which was usually performed by internal staff of large MNCs, the start-up had to run at a tedious pace for three years until it could grab the attention of the skeptic clients in the industry. But once Raja proved Tessolve’s value through exceptional deliveries in quality and innovation, projects started surging from all directions, enabling the company to grow rapidly for the past four years with remarkable profit.
He believes, we are onto a new era in semiconductor and electronics where companies are adapting more to collaboration then working in isolation. Software is playing a major role in chip companies. Tessolve with its expertise, experience and scalability would mature into a company would be able to bridge the software and hardware in all aspects of semiconductor development, manufacturing and taking it to market. All these is happening with massive consolidation, advent of service companies, system companies wanting their own proprietary hardware and most importantly a proliferation of devices that will likely triple in the next 10 years. Its time for a new business model that would truly bring affordable technology to the masses.
The One-of-a-kind Entrepreneur
People gravitate towards Raja due to his gregarious nature and ability to empathize with people and their issues. Raja is a Sports Junkie, who loves to spend his free time playing and watching sports. Being a busy CEO, who spends most of his time travelling, he prefers to stay back at home to have some family time with his wife and grandchildren whenever possible. Being a hands-on guy, who encourages innovation, Raja makes it a point to get in touch with the freshers at every quarterly meeting and loves to take up the dais to share the story of his own hardships and success to inspire and motivate the young minds working for his company. He believes in the thought of ‘two is better than one’ and insists on finding the ‘right’ partner to execute the ‘right’ idea.
OUTSTANDING CATEGORY
P Raja Manickam
Founder & CEO
Raja Manickam founded Tessolve in 2004 with a vision to create a engineering and productization company in electronics and semiconductors. He brings a unique mix of experience encompassing the entire chip development process, from managing product lines, running a manufacturing site and building up start-ups. This experience allowed him to build Tessolve to bridge the gaps he saw in the development cycle of silicon and systems engineering. Starting his career as a Test Engineer in Texas Instruments he moved on to Fairchild, National Semiconductor, DTS and Viko test labs. He was also involved in the early start-up of STATS and UTAC.
In his vibrant 30-year career, he held engineering, product line, sales and marketing responsibilities. He is alumni of RI in Singapore and B.Tech(hons) IIT Kharagpur. It is hard for any of us to muster up courage to chase the dream of our lives. But that is exactly what Raja Manickam Founder and CEO of Tessolve did, by quitting his cozy job at the age of 48; only to follow his passion of establishing a company that eliminates the inefficiency in Semiconductor and Systems Productization.
Having worked with giants like Texas Instruments, as well as emerging start-ups like STATS, when they were just established, Raja gained the knowledge of all aspects of product line activity from scratch. He had unique qualification of working in Product Lines, in captive factories in operations and engineering and outsourced OSAT factories. Although his forte is in engineering, he was involved in setting up Sales and Marketing offices and driving them to billion-dollar organizations. He had developed methodologies to increase efficiency and reduce time to market. He believed this business model can be scaled in Asia with the availability and depth of engineering in India and SE Asian countries. Besides, Asia is the fastest growing region in the electronics sector. Raja got his initial experience from TI Singapore which was a tough manufacturing environment in the 80’s. This was his foundation to learn on how companies are run. While he was in US and other countries, he continued to nurture his network in Singapore and SE Asia. He took the leap with the support of his wife, “If you think you are smart enough to start a company, just go for it,” after which he never looked back. People People gravitate towards Raja due to his gregarious nature and ability to empathize with people and their issues.
“Being a hands-on guy, who encourages innovation, Raja makes it a point to get in touch with the freshers at every quarterly meeting and loves to take up the dais to share the story of his own hardships and success to inspire and motivate the young minds working for his company.”
The Execution
Raja, the Idealist, wanted to create a company that would be the best in what they did. He wanted to build the company “one brick at a time” by involving himself in every aspect of the company. The labs needed to be run 24/7 as the equipments were expensive and will work only with precision power. This was a major challenge in India where power is unstable and fluctuations were normal. With a clear perspective, Raja recruited young talent, trained them in the “Tessolve Way”. Although this was not the fastest way to revenue generation, he believed the core engineering must have “Tessolve DNA.” Empowering young engineers, creating an environment where innovation can thrive and there is no fear is key to success of Tessolve.
Since Tessolve was breaking new grounds and pioneering the concept of productization, which was usually performed by internal staff of large MNCs, the start-up had to run at a tedious pace for three years until it could grab the attention of the skeptic clients in the industry. But once Raja proved Tessolve’s value through exceptional deliveries in quality and innovation, projects started surging from all directions, enabling the company to grow rapidly for the past four years with remarkable profit.
He believes, we are onto a new era in semiconductor and electronics where companies are adapting more to collaboration then working in isolation. Software is playing a major role in chip companies. Tessolve with its expertise, experience and scalability would mature into a company would be able to bridge the software and hardware in all aspects of semiconductor development, manufacturing and taking it to market. All these is happening with massive consolidation, advent of service companies, system companies wanting their own proprietary hardware and most importantly a proliferation of devices that will likely triple in the next 10 years. Its time for a new business model that would truly bring affordable technology to the masses.
The One-of-a-kind Entrepreneur
People gravitate towards Raja due to his gregarious nature and ability to empathize with people and their issues. Raja is a Sports Junkie, who loves to spend his free time playing and watching sports. Being a busy CEO, who spends most of his time travelling, he prefers to stay back at home to have some family time with his wife and grandchildren whenever possible. Being a hands-on guy, who encourages innovation, Raja makes it a point to get in touch with the freshers at every quarterly meeting and loves to take up the dais to share the story of his own hardships and success to inspire and motivate the young minds working for his company. He believes in the thought of ‘two is better than one’ and insists on finding the ‘right’ partner to execute the ‘right’ idea.