“I believe in setting the vision and communicating and motivating the team around the common vision and then through consultation establishing periodic goals for each group. I prefer the team to use their creative energy in accomplishing these goals. I trust my team and do not try to micromanage them daily”
The above quote describes the zeal of a leader who is not only clear on what needs to be done, but also knows how to do it effectively and efficiently. The dynamic business leader we are talking about here is none other than Ravi Thummarukudy, CEO of Mobiveil. Mobiveil is a fast‐growing technology company that specializes in development of Silicon Intellectual Properties (SIP), platforms and solutions for networking, storage and enterprise markets
Ravi always had a curious mind and believes in continuous learning. Ravi started his career as a senior scientist at Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) but soon migrated to VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) and electronic product development. Thankfully, these domains are extremely dynamic with plenty of opportunities for innovation. He always sought a win-win relationship with his customers, and it gave him great pleasure to connect with them and understand their plans and aspirations as well. According to him, it was the Mobiveil team that inspired him to think big and look for even greater challenges.
Mobiveil team is bound by the passion for technologies that accelerate electronics product development. His co-founders at Mobiveil – Gopa Periyadan (COO), Amit Saxena (VP of Engineering), Srinivasan Durai (MD, Indian operations) were his colleagues at the previous start-up GDA. Working with his co-founders and his senior management team has been very satisfying journey for Ravi and being a part of such an interesting domain and working along with highly creative customers, a highly skilled and talented Mobiveil team, he feels grateful.
Mobiveil’s Moto is “Investors in Innovation”. It means that the management team at Mobiveil are investors in R&D in many areas in electronics- like technologies that goes in to Flash storage, Enterprise/Cloud, IoT, and Automotive markets etc. In electronics, domain standardization has been key to the disaggregation of the industry and unlocking innovation and market potential of fast-growing companies like Mobiveil. Standardization has enabled engineers at Mobiveil to cooperate with their counter parts from leading electronics companies around the world. It also allowed R&D companies like Mobiveil to monetize their intellectual properties by designing it once but re-using it many times. Currently, Mobiveil is part of several industry standard organizations and implements these standards and market it as re-useable intellectual properties to customers worldwide.
“Our customers implement the stands-based design we provide in their semiconductor chips as a building block,” says Ravi. Mobiveil team has also gone one step further by not only developing the technology but also coming up with an application platform enabling customers to accelerate their product development. Over the years, Mobiveil management has learnt that an innovative team needs to maintain an open work culture with least hierarchy where employees can learn a lot while contributing to customer success. “I believe that small company culture allows our employees to take more ownership and responsibilities and grow quickly personally and professionally,” states Ravi.
Navigating through the Rough Patches
Like most companies, when Mobiveil was founded, Mobiveil was unknown in the marketplace. Because of the cost of fabricating semiconductor is so expensive that it is extremely tough for start-up companies to be a supplier of key building blocks to large product companies. Even if the customer knew Ravi and his team personally, Mobiveil did not have the history and track record at that time. . But thanks to Mobiveil’s leadership in critical standards, technologies and platforms, soon many doors opened up enabling the company to grow rapidly..
But once Mobiveil started working with customers, they always managed to keep them as their long-term customers. Sometimes it took the team several years to be qualified as vendors with some large customers. Other times, it was difficult to run the operations profitably on a quarterly basis which was one of their important objectives. “In our domain the technologies change very rapidly, and we need to be on top of the game to react to the changing requirements from our customers,” explains Ravi.
Like every company, the pandemic had a major impact on Mobiveil’s operations. Some of the work it does cater well for remote working so the team quickly mobilized infrastructure to complete such work remotely. Also, many of the company’s customers accommodated Mobiveil consultants to work remotely as well. “But there was some work that needed to happen at the lab for example, we had no choice but to strictly implement local COVID-19 guidelines irrespective of the cost involved,” describes Ravi.
He believes that working remotely is not the best way to innovate as many ideas are created by interaction between different teams sometimes in informal settings. So he looks forward to the time where majority of the team can go back to office and have normal lives resumed for the better. The whole Mobiveil team reacted well early in the pandemic and was able to even grow the business last year.
Striving for Success
Most of the work that the company does are for next generation products and technologies where there is plenty to learn for everyone. This is probably the best motivation factor for the employees of Mobiveil. Employees who are curious and smart can learn a lot and will thrive at Mobiveil. Ravi facilitates an open work culture without a lot of barriers that allow easy communication and continuous learning.
Advising young generation of entrepreneurs, Ravi says, “I would say the first thing is to do something that you enjoy and be passionate about. Second look for a team that is equally passionate about your dreams and can support you in accomplishing that goal.” Indeed, understanding customers and employees is crucial in creating and running a successful business.
In terms of future growth, Ravi believes that the company has excellent growth prospects as it is observing so many areas of growth in electronic product development be it in Cloud applications, Security, IoT or autonomous driving. He sees the Indian market to be primed for companies like Mobiveil to develop electronics products that are customized for local applications.
Along the way, Mobiveil has also set up a VLSI institute to train fresh graduates ”At Ampere VLSI institute we teach VLSI design not from academic point of view but from a practitioner’s point of view”. The successful candidates who come out of this institute will be either absorbed by Mobiveil or easily get qualified to join prestigious corporations.
