"We heavily focus on market differentiation to be successful"

Rajiv Kapur
Managing Director
Broadcom India

Rajiv Kapur, Managing Director, Broadcom India gives us an insight on the functioning of his company and the growth areas it is eyeing to acquire that unique position for Broadcom in the market

What is the current focus of your company for the Indian market? What are the key growth areas for you?

Broadcom is a global innovator and leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Our products seamlessly deliver voice, video, data and multimedia connectivity in the home, office and mobile environments.

Broadcom India offers the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip (SoC) and embedded software solutions for the mobility and wireless, set-top boxes and network infrastructure and automotive industries. India is already a large market for Broadcom with an even greater potential for future growth. The fact that the country is representative of the emerging world makes it even more important for us. We are heavily invested in R&D in India and innovate and invest in technologies that are well suited for emerging countries. Some of these technologies are uniquely created SoCs or solutions for India and other emerging countries.

Broadcom India is aligned with Broadcom’s DNA - focus on high quality HR, entrepreneurial culture, track record of successful transactions, proximity and relationship with top customers and end-to-end program ownership. Broadcom and our customers are highly interested in India. We are staffed to support direct and end market growth across diverse products segments.

India markets are quite large for us already. We are excited about growth across many segments. To name a few that are large and growing in India – Microwave, Mobile backhaul, Cable and Satellite STB, Mobile, LTE, GPON and other access solutions like DSL and Cable Modems, etc.

Please give us an idea of the products and solutions that you have currently for the Indian market?

Broadcom product diversity is very high. Almost all products make their way into the Indian end markets through our customer system OEMs. It is, in fact, hard to think of exceptions to this. To name a few

•             STB – Cable, Satellite, IPTV

•             Access Solutions: Cable Modems and CMTS; DSLAMs and DSL CPE for ADSL and VDSL; Metro Ethernet switches

•             Network solutions for backhaul, datacenter, small/medium business

•             Automotive solutions

•             Mobile 2G, 3G and soon LTE solutions, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, VoIP

What is your Go-to-Market strategy? What plans do you have to make your presence in the Indian market?

We support a variety of Global ODMs and OEMs who design systems for India and other countries. Often, we see Indian companies designing and manufacturing equipments for India and then exporting. Broadcom is a chip company and we are ready to support design and manufacture in India, as well as for global customers shipping into India. Besides supporting our customers, we also spend time with our end markets to ensure we understand the market requirements. As a result, we work closely with end market influencers like telecom operators, broadcast operators and also ensure we have the right solutions in our products. Since we heavily focus on market differentiation, this is very important to us.

What are the challenges that happen to hinder growth for your company?

Challenges bring opportunities to bring the right technologies to India. India poses several such opportunities to be served that are somewhat unique. Some examples are listed below

•             Diversity of language - leads to higher channel count and need for localization of languages in menus etc.

•             Lack of predictable power - leads to need for low power, reverse power solutions.

•             Bad cable networks - lead to need for highly optimized hardware and software solutions to deliver good cable STB, high performing DSL etc.

•             Complexity of laying cables – leads to need for wireless solutions including microwave where we invest heavily.

•             Low literacy levels, low comfort for technology – lead to simplification of solutions using Bluetooth etc.

•             Low PC penetration, affordability – lead to invention of low cost compute platforms that natively work with TV screens.

•             Low safety for women – leads to need for simple solutions built on smartphones to help women be safer when alone.

What is your future roadmap? 

India is an extremely important market for Broadcom with a very high impact on our top and bottom lines. Broadcom is heavily committed to the Indian market with R&D investments, local engineering and customer faced support in the country. In fact, Broadcom’s second largest R&D center outside of the US is in India. We’ll continue to enhance our compelling and diverse product portfolio for India through constant innovation. We thrive on market differentiating features in every product line, no matter how commoditized it may seem. Our constant endeavour is to work towards a continuous stream of roadmap items that are brought to the market across our full portfolio.