Spirit of Success

There’s a bounce in her step and she greets you with a spontaneous smile. “Have you had lunch?” she says, at the end of the press conference. “Okay, let’s have lunch while we talk.”

She’s purposeful, very pleasant, yet not quite what one expects perhaps from a sector that’s as geeky as can be semiconductors. Poornima Shenoy is president of the Indian Semiconductor Association, an organisation that she was responsible for setting up in the last 12 months.

An economics graduate with an MBA from T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal, Shenoy’s academic background is anything but techie. But having lived in India’s Silicon City Bangalore most of her life, the infotech sector’s where Shenoy spent about 13 years of her professional life. “Actually, I am an entrepreneur at heart,” Shenoy says, explaining her association with the semiconductor industry.

Starting up, in fact, seems to be a passion for Shenoy, who has worked with Nasscom and been instrumental in setting up its Bangalore office. Prior to that, Shenoy co-founded Nexus Consulting, which went off to become one of the leading executive search firms in the information technology sector and was acquired by e4e in 2000. But the tech sector, too, holds a strong attraction for Shenoy. “This is a sector of technocrats great people with strong values,” she says.

As president of ISA, it’s Shenoy’s job to get more visibility for the semiconductor industry, which is booming, but seems to hold very little interest for the outside world. The industry is estimated to create over 3.5 million jobs by 2015. The GDP contribution from this sector is estimated to grow to more that 12% in 2015 from about 2% in 2005, and a recent Frost & Sullivan report suggests that the total market for semiconductors could grow to $36.3 billion in 2005. What’s more a number of semiconductor companies seem to have taken a shine to India and have plans for setting up facilities here.

“The challenges we face now is to build more awareness about the industry and get the right talent from engineering institutions to join it,” says Shenoy. It’s a very crucial phase for the sector, and Shenoy feels great she’s in the thick of it.