Proof of the Pudding

All the lofty ideas had to be translated to ground realities. After much discussion, we planned to follow silicon valley model and interact with a university, they would do higher risk research and we would follow product path. Previous interaction with IITs indicated that they were flush with money and really did not have much reason to interact. A news item had placed KREC Surathkal eighth all India and reputation of students from the region as being extremely capable. I had read up on STEP, Udyog Mitra and other programs in limited internet information that was available. After reaching Bangalore I took a night bus to Surathkal. This was the first trip to Mangalore vicinity, the Indira bus was to Surathkal. After reaching Mangalore, when I talked about KREC, the bus people obliged by making the additional couple of kilometers to drop me right in front of the guest house. All good omens so far.

So armed with a resume and introduction from Dr Ghate, I came to visit KREC. I was in for a shock, in the first meeting itself I was told that I was too late for any KREC students and STEP was usually reserved for students from the institute. Stanford style interaction was far from any one's mind and my resume had limited impact, I found this over and over. Having come all the way, I went through the motion of looking at STEP just in case I would be granted access. After finding out rents for the sheds and rent of computers etc., I slept for a couple of hours and then asked about housing for engineers working for us and where their spouses would stay. There was no answer for such a stupid question. So I posed another question to the officials, is there any reason I should set up a chip design centre next to KREC. No answer this time either. I decided the plan to set up the design centre in India was a mistake.

Some of the faculty made reference to Dr Narasimh Bhat in Manipal, 60 km away having started a software centre called Zeta Infotech to conduct research for Synopsys. Having made the first trip to Mangalore vicinity, I thought it proper to visit him. So after calling him and changing plans a couple of times, especially since the guest house needed the room for alumni to attend a sports meet, I took an express bus that reached Manipal. Though I thought the plan was for me to stow my luggage in Dr Bhat's office and walk around Manipal till afternoon, he had arranged for a car to meet principal of local engineering college and Mr. Kudva had keys to a house that the landlord had provided to possible employees of the Zeta. He said the house would fit our purpose well. D115 in Ananthnagar turned out to be great house to start KarMic.

Dr Bhat's reception is more typical of a Chamber of Commerce in US, where a community wants a clean industry to come to town. Again, Dr Bhat represented the town's interest unlike in KREC, there was no one who really felt empowered to talk about Surathkal. Dr Bhat who had studied in US and written a patent looked at my resume and thought it meant something. So I changed my mind and decided to set up the centre in Manipal. This was December of 1998.

Staying in the house, I started planning selection of the candidates for training. Dr Bhat mentioned that the next door neighbor, Dr S J Bhat, was the former head of Electronics and Communication department of MIT, the local engineering college. He had just retired. It became a duty to convince him to help me, which he did and more, he became a confidant and a Guru to bounce philosophical and practical issues.

There was a VLSI conference in Goa in January and Dr Bhat and some of his Zeta engineers headed to attend the conference. I tagged along, sharing their Idlis and Dosas. There is a morning Konkan railway passenger to Madgaon from Mangalore passing through Udupi. Fare was Rs 42. I had to explain that to my colleagues in Texas in terms of dollars. Anyways, Goa costs started being more in dollars than in rupees. There was a reasonable crowd there and many volunteers doing M Sc in electronics. So we sat under some trees and discussed what we were going to do and I was extremely happy that I had already talked to 20 possible candidates. None of them eventually applied.

I went to local colleges, NMAMIT, MIT etc., describing what we planned. On one of these trips I met Mrs Shalini Sharma, I was getting a free ride in their bus from Nitte. I talked to her on the return trip and described what we planned. I had said we were looking for Electrical engineers (I did not know all the branches then) and since we also wanted good representation from women. It got translated to our wanting women from EE branch, in any case, she pursued and got four candidates for interview. Three MIT students while visiting KREC had seen the presentation and on their own applied. Finally, Prof Desai saw something in my discussion to push a couple of students from BVB, Hubli. We set up an interview date and seven of the nine students joined. Suman Pai, one of the Nitte women decided to try out for IAS and eventually joined a year later. One of the MIT students did not join. Against a target of eight, we had seven students in the first batch. Phew!! Only recently, I came to know one of the candidates had come to reject the offer and changed the mind at the last minute.

To them, we described the entrepreneurial plan. We talked about the one year training, four periods of 11 weeks each and 2 weeks off in between. We talked about one hour per day company related work for which they would receive Rs 1500 per month. Initially, Sridhar's provided food, but eventually we had to organize a cook. For a bit of time, our engineers were making toasts and tea. Houses were in MIG houses, close to D115. Every evening we would go to see sunset. Every day 9 to 12 we would have classes one topic per day. Afternoon would be labs. Dr S J Bhat, our neighbour taught RF and philosophy on the side. We bought discarded steel shelves for the numerous books in the library. Sharmila, our only lady engineer became in chanrge of hiring for the next batch. Others got to look after library, look at expenses, set up computer system with Linux, new at that time. More responsibility was given to the engineers than ever in their life, no one failed. D115 housed all the activities, a bedroom as a classroom, b.another bedroom and kitchen as labs and upstairs one bedroom for me and another laboratory.

We figured out Linux, MAGIC and SPICE, designed a couple of circuits and when sent to MOSIS did not if the chips would work. Any one of 100s of things could go wrong. They did not, excitement of something wiggling out of the chip was wonderful. It turned out no one in India was doing anything with silicon that time, and few in Manipal knew what was happening- situation now is not much different.

At the end of the training period, a peer review was conducted. One engineer would be sent out and the remaining engineers would evaluate him/her on several qualities. After competing this for all engineers, the criticisms were discussed openly. Each candidate would come to accept the criticism and how to improve. This practice still continues and is the basis of transferring an engineer from Training Centre to the Design Centre. We will cover the design centre in the next issue.