In this podcast by Analytics India Magazine (AIM), explore truths like why nobody wants to be seen outside of AI today; why Ignitarium doesn’t throw AI at all problems; AI misconceptions and Ignitarium’s AI / Deep Learning dive 6 years ago and our journey thenceforth!
Co-founder & CEO
Founder and Managing director of Ignitarium, Sanjay has been responsible for defining Ignitarium’s core values, which encompass the organisation’s approach towards clients, partners, and all internal stakeholders, and in establishing an innovation and value-driven organisational culture.
Prior to founding Ignitarium in 2012, Sanjay spent the initial 22 years of his career with the VLSI and Systems Business unit at Wipro Technologies. In his formative years, Sanjay worked in diverse engineering roles in Electronic hardware design, ASIC design, and custom library development. Sanjay later handled a flagship – multi-million dollar, 600-engineer strong – Semiconductor & Embedded account owning complete Delivery and Business responsibility.
Sanjay graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum, and has a Postgraduate degree in Microelectronics from BITS Pilani.
Board Member
Ramesh was the Founder and CEO of Insta Health Solutions, a software products company focused on providing complete hospital and clinic management solutions for hospitals and clinics in India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He raised Series A funds from Inventus Capital and then subsequently sold the company to Practo Technologies, India. Post-sale, he held the role of SVP and Head of the Insta BU for 4 years. He has now retired from full-time employment and is working as a consultant and board member.
Prior to Insta, Ramesh had a 25-year-long career at Wipro Technologies where he was the President of the $1B Telecom and Product Engineering Solutions business heading a team of 19,000 people with a truly global operations footprint. Among his other key roles at Wipro, he was a member of Wipro's Corporate Executive Council and was Chief Technology Officer.
Ramesh is also an Independent Board Member of eMIDs Technologies, a $100M IT services company focused on the healthcare vertical with market presence in the US and India.
Ramesh holds an M-Tech in Computer Science from IIT-Kanpur.
VP – Sales & Business Development
Manoj Thandassery is responsible for the India business at Ignitarium. He has over 20 years of leadership and business experience in various industries including the IT and Product Engineering industry. He has held various responsibilities including Geo head at Sasken China, Portfolio head at Wipro USA, and India & APAC Director of Sales at Emeritus. He has led large multi-country teams of up to 350 employees. Manoj was also an entrepreneur and has successfully launched and scaled, via multiple VC-led investment rounds, an Edtech business in the K12 space that was subsequently sold to a global Edtech giant.
An XLRI alumnus, Manoj divides his time between Pune and Bangalore.
General Manager - Marketing
A professional with a 14-year track record in technology marketing, Malavika heads marketing in Ignitarium. Responsible for all branding, positioning and promotional initiatives in the company, she has collaborated with technical and business teams to further strengthen Ignitarium's positioning as a key E R&D services player in the ecosystem.
Prior to Ignitarium, Malavika has worked in with multiple global tech startups and IT consulting companies as a marketing consultant. Earlier, she headed marketing for the Semiconductor & Systems BU at Wipro Technologies and worked at IBM in their application software division.
Malavika completed her MBA in Marketing from SCMHRD, Pune, and holds a B.E. degree in Telecommunications from RVCE, Bengaluru.
VP - Operations
Pradeep comes with an overall experience of 26 years across IT services and Academia. In his previous role at Virtusa, he played the role of Delivery Leader for the Middle East geography. He has handled complex delivery projects including the transition of large engagements, account management, and setting up new delivery centers.
Pradeep graduated in Industrial Engineering and Management, went on to secure an MBA from CUSAT, and cleared UGN Net in Management. He also had teaching stints at his alma mater, CUSAT, and other management institutes like DCSMAT. A certified P3O (Portfolio, Program & Project Management) from the Office of Government Commerce, UK, Pradeep has been recognized for key contributions in the Management domain, at his previous organizations, Wipro & Virtusa.
In his role as the Head of Operations at Ignitarium, Pradeep leads and manages operational functions such as Resource Management, Procurement, Facilities, IT Infrastructure, and Program Management office.
AVP – Human Resources
Sona heads Human Resource functions - Employee Engagement, HR Operations and Learning & Development – at Ignitarium. Her expertise include deep and broad experience in strategic people initiatives, performance management, talent transformation, talent acquisition, people engagement & compliance in the Information Technology & Services industry.
Prior to Ignitarium, Sona has had held diverse HR responsibilities at Litmus7, Cognizant and Wipro.
Sona graduated in Commerce from St. Xaviers College and did her MBA in HR from PSG College of Technology.
Vice President - Sales
As VP of Sales, Ashwin is responsible for Ignitarium’s go-to-market strategy, business, client relationships, and customer success in the Americas. He brings in over a couple of decades of experience, mainly in the product engineering space with customers from a wide spectrum of industries, especially in the Hi-Tech/semiconductor and telecom verticals.
Ashwin has worked with the likes of Wipro, GlobalLogic, and Mastek, wherein unconventional and creative business models were used to bring in non-linear revenue. He has strategically diversified, de-risked, and grown his portfolios during his sales career.
Ashwin strongly believes in the customer-first approach and works to add value and enhance the experiences of our customers.
Vice President – Sales & Business Development
Azif is responsible for go-to-market strategy, business development and sales at Ignitarium. Azif has over 14 years of cross-functional experience in the semiconductor product & service spaces and has held senior positions in global client management, strategic account management and business development. An IIM-K alumnus, he has been associated with Wipro, Nokia and Sankalp in the past.
Azif handled key accounts and sales process initiatives at Sankalp Semiconductors. Azif has pursued entrepreneurial interests in the past and was associated with multiple start-ups in various executive roles. His start-up was successful in raising seed funds from Nokia, India. During his tenure at Nokia, he played a key role in driving product evangelism and customer success functions for the multimedia division.
At Wipro, he was involved in customer engagement with global customers in APAC and US.
Distinguished Engineer – Digital
At Ignitarium, Raju's charter is to architect world class Digital solutions at the confluence of Edge, Cloud and Analytics. Raju has over 25 years of experience in the field of Telecom, Mobility and Cloud. Prior to Ignitarium, he worked at Nokia India Pvt. Ltd. and Sasken Communication Technologies in various leadership positions and was responsible for the delivery of various developer platforms and products.
Raju graduated in Electronics Engineering from Model Engineering College, Cochin and has an Executive Post Graduate Program (EPGP) in Strategy and Finance from IIM Kozhikode.
Senior Vice President - Software Engineering
Pradeep heads the Software Engineering division, with a charter to build and grow a world-beating delivery team. He is responsible for all the software functions, which includes embedded & automotive software, multimedia, and AI & Digital services
At Ignitarium, he was previously part of the sales and marketing team with a special focus on generating a sales pipeline for Vision Intelligence products and services, working with worldwide field sales & partner ecosystems in the U.S Europe, and APAC.
Prior to joining Ignitarium in 2017, Pradeep was Senior Solutions Architect at Open-Silicon, an ASIC design house. At Open-Silicon, where he spent a good five years, Pradeep was responsible for Front-end, FPGA, and embedded SW business development, marketing & technical sales and also drove the IoT R&D roadmap. Pradeep started his professional career in 2000 at Sasken, where he worked for 11 years, primarily as an embedded multimedia expert, and then went on to lead the Multimedia software IP team.
Pradeep is a graduate in Electronics & Communication from RVCE, Bangalore.
Senior Vice President – Automotive Technology
Sujeet is responsible for driving innovation in Automotive software, identifying Automotive technology trends and advancements, evaluating their potential impact, and development of solutions to meet the needs of our Automotive customers.
At Ignitarium, he was previously responsible for the growth and P&L of the Embedded Business unit focusing on Multimedia, Automotive, and Platform software.
Prior to joining Ignitarium in 2016, Sujeet has had a career spanning more than 16 years at Wipro. During this stint, he has played diverse roles from Solution Architect to Presales Lead covering various domains. His technical expertise lies in the areas of Telecom, Embedded Systems, Wireless, Networking, SoC modeling, and Automotive. He has been honored as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Wipro and has multiple patents granted in the areas of Networking and IoT Security.
Sujeet holds a degree in Computer Science from Government Engineering College, Thrissur.
Distinguished Engineer
At Ignitarium, Rajin plays the role of Distinguished Engineer for complex SoCs and systems. He's an expert in ARM-based designs having architected more than a dozen SoCs and played hands-on design roles in several tens more. His core areas of specialization include security and functional safety architecture (IEC61508 and ISO26262) of automotive systems, RTL implementation of math intensive signal processing blocks as well as design of video processing and related multimedia blocks.
Prior to Ignitarium, Rajin worked at Wipro Technologies for 14 years where he held roles of architect and consultant for several VLSI designs in the automotive and consumer domains.
Rajin holds an MS in Micro-electronics from BITS Pilani.
Executive Vice President, Strategy
As EVP, of Strategy at Ignitarium, Siby anchors multiple functions spanning investor community relations, business growth, technology initiatives as well and operational excellence.
Siby has over 31 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. In his last role at Wipro Technologies, he headed the Semiconductor Industry Practice Group where he was responsible for business growth and engineering delivery for all of Wipro’s semiconductor customers. Prior to that, he held a vast array of crucial roles at Wipro including Chief Technologist & Vice President, CTO Office, Global Delivery Head for Product Engineering Services, Business Head of Semiconductor & Consumer Electronics, and Head of Unified Competency Framework. He was instrumental in growing Wipro’s semiconductor business to over $100 million within 5 years and turning around its Consumer Electronics business in less than 2 years. In addition, he was the Engineering Manager for Enthink Inc., a semiconductor IP-focused subsidiary of Wipro. Prior to that, Siby was the Technical Lead for several of the most prestigious system engineering projects executed by Wipro R&D.
Siby has held a host of deeply impactful positions, which included representing Wipro in various World Economic Forum working groups on Industrial IOT and as a member of IEEE’s IOT Steering Committee.
He completed his MTech. in Electrical Engineering (Information and Control) from IIT, Kanpur and his BTech. from NIT, Calicut
Board Member
An accomplished leader with over 40 years of experience, Sudip has helped build and grow companies in India, the US and the UK.
He has held the post of Independent Director and Board Member for several organizations like Redington Limited, Excelra, Artison Agrotech, GeBBS Healthcare Solutions, Liquid Hub Inc. and ResultsCX.
Most recently, Sudip was a Senior Advisor at ChrysCapital, a private equity firm where he has also been the Managing Director and Operating Partner for IT for the past 5 years. During his tenure, he has been Executive Chairman of California-headquartered Infogain Corporation and the non-Exec Chair on the board of a pioneering electric-2-wheeler company Ampere Vehicles, which is now a brand of Greaves Cotton Ltd.
Earlier on in his career, Sudip has been the CEO and then Chairman India for Aricent. Prior to that, he had spent 25+ years in Wipro where he has been the Head of US business, Engineering R&D Services, and later the Head of EU Operations.
Sudip is an active investor in several interesting startups in India and overseas, which mostly use technology for the social good, encompassing hyperlocal, healthcare, rural development, farmer support and e2W ecosystem. He also spends time as a coach and mentor for several CEOs in this role.
Chief Technology Officer
As CTO, Sujeeth is responsible for defining the technology roadmap, driving IP & solution development, and transitioning these technology components into practically deployable product engineering use cases.
With a career spanning over 30+ years, Sujeeth Joseph is a semiconductor industry veteran in the SoC, System and Product architecture space. At SanDisk India, he was Director of Architecture for the USD $2B Removable Products Group. Simultaneously, he also headed the SanDisk India Patenting function, the Retail Competitive Analysis Group and drove academic research programs with premier Indian academic Institutes. Prior to SanDisk, he was Chief Architect of the Semiconductor & Systems BU (SnS) of Wipro Technologies. Over a 19-year career at Wipro, he has played hands-on and leadership roles across all phases of the ASIC and System design flow.
He graduated in Electronics Engineering from Bombay University in 1991.
Co-founder & COO
As Ignitarium's Co-founder and COO, Sujith is responsible for driving the operational efficiency and streamlining process across the organization. He is also responsible for the growth and P&L of the Semiconductor Business Unit.
Apart from establishing a compelling story in VLSI, Sujith was responsible for Ignitarium's foray into nascent technology areas like AI, ML, Computer Vision, and IoT, nurturing them in our R&D Lab - "The Crucible".
Prior to founding Ignitarium, Sujith played the role of a VLSI architect at Wipro Technologies for 13 years. In true hands-on mode, he has built ASICs and FPGAs for the Multimedia, Telecommunication, and Healthcare domains and has provided technical leadership for many flagship projects executed by Wipro.
Sujith graduated from NIT - Calicut in the year 2000 in Electronics and Communications Engineering and thereafter he has successfully completed a one-year executive program in Business Management from IIM Calcutta.
Co-founder & CRO
As Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Ignitarium, Ramesh has been responsible for global business and marketing as well as building trusted customer relationships upholding the company's core values.
Ramesh has over 25 years of experience in the Semiconductor Industry covering all aspects of IC design. Prior to Ignitarium, Ramesh was a key member of the senior management team of the semiconductor division at Wipro Technologies. Ramesh has played key roles in Semiconductor Delivery and Pre-sales at a global level.
Ramesh graduated in Electronics Engineering from Model Engineering College, Cochin, and has a Postgraduate degree in Microelectronics from BITS Pilani.
