Tahoe - trailblazing towards a silicon delta

RMG industry is a $470 Billion industry, Bangladesh is the second largest RMG exporter with a 6.7% market share. Its export to date is $36.6 Billion. Let’s look at a comparable industry, the semiconductor industry. The semiconductor is a $440 Billion industry. Bangladesh’s share in this industry is very insignificant, close to zero percent. 

Bangladesh can get a share of this lucrative semiconductor market by developing skilled workforce in various areas of chip design. With a population of 163 million of which 65% are under 25, roughly 10 million youths are unemployed. With a training institute that is focused on hands-on training of various chip design aspects, there is huge potential to train these youths into chip design experts.

This will not only create high paying high tech jobs but also create an ecosystem comprising of the Academia, Training Institutes, Semiconductor Companies thereby creating many other supporting low tech jobs.

In Bangladesh there is around 100+ public and private universities that teaches science and technology and has some sort of engineering curriculum. Some of them teaches basic courses needed for chip design engineers, but none of them goes into depth and most do not use latest technologies and tools for hands-on training. So universities are producing engineers and hoping they will get lucrative high tech jobs. On the other end we have chip design companies with shortage of engineers, and on constant look-out. What we are missing is a training institute bridging this gap. The training institute will use the latest tools and technologies and give hands-on training to the graduates. 

There are close to 10,000 engineering students graduating from various universities each year. If we can train them with various aspects of chip design, and create a pool of experts, Silicon Valley will definitely want to set up few ODCs [off-shore design centers] in the capital Dhaka. 

With a market as big as $440 Billion and growing, if Bangladesh can get even 1% share it will be a $4 Billion market. Any high tech company will help flourish other food, beverage, housing industries thereby creating a modest job market.

There are 100+ universities [public and private] in Bangladesh and most of them offer some kind of High Tech courses, either in Engineering discipline, or Computer Science. However these graduates are not employable in chip design. On the other hand there are handful of Semiconductor companies in Bangladesh looking to hire, but are not finding the candidates with right skill set. 

Tahoe's goal is to take these graduating students and give them 16 weeks of boot-camp training and make them experts in chip design. Our goal is to prepare them for Chip Design work and as Semiconductor is now a $440 Billion industry, we hope to penetrate into that market with enough skilled high-tech workers. 

To this end we have already conducted the first session of Tahoe and the first batch just completed their training and we have placed top 20% of this batch to Industry already.

You can check-out these in our facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/tahoebd

By creating a pool of such highly skilled workers we will attract the big names like Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, Samsung, to open their ODCs [Off-shore design centers] in the heart of the capital.

One of the ways to enter the Semiconductor market is to create specialized knowledge in Bangladesh. Our goal is to use the latest tools and technology, like Cadence and Synopsys tools which are used to design, verify and sign-off on small to multi-million transistor chips. We will provide the exact knowledge needed to gain the expertise and then make these graduates work on projects for 6 months. During this time they will be able to get over-seas out-sourced work.

The major cost of providing this knowledge is deployment of the tools from companies like Cadence and Synopsys. Our goal is to buy licenses for these tools and give hands-on, laser focused, latest technology based training which will in turn help our graduates get high-paying high-tech jobs.

Bangladesh is not a significant part of the global semiconductor industry. However the ingredients needed to make Bangladesh earn a part of the $440 Billion dollar industry is there. We need a focused platform to bring all relevant parties together. Tahoe strives to bring the up to date knowledge to the graduates of the universities, and fill a gaping hole when it comes to VLSI and Chip Design skills. Tahoe is also the platform to bring the Universities and the Industry together to brain storm the best way to educate, train and ultimately employ skilled Chip Design Engineers. Tahoe also has reached out to various government agencies to provide infrastructure suitable for Chip Design industries to grow. Innovation is not always creating new things but using tools laying around you and build great talents and work force for today's high paced technology driven world.

Tahoe is committed to bring in the chip design skills from Silicon Valley and pave a way for Bangladesh to become a Silicon Delta of the East. Once the chip design companies sees a significant pool of skilled chip design work force, they will come flocking to Bangladesh, and also send projects to be completed with local skills. Bangladesh will, sooner or later,  reach the point where it's chip design work will contribute significantly to its economy. Question is why the time is not now. Tahoe is starting dialogues and providing all possible know-how and skills to make this phenomenon happen right now in Bangladesh. 

We are certain that the solution we are proposing will work and we will create a pool of skilled chip design workforce who will be employable. Countries like China, India, Vietnam, Taiwan, are all well known in the field of semiconductor industry. A case study of India shows how they came up with this concept of training graduates and making them industry ready. Chip design companies from Silicon Valley rushed in Bangalore as there was a acute shortage of chip design engineers in the last decade. As the trend continues, if Bangladesh can train and create a pool of skilled chip design workers, chip design companies will flock here due to competitive prices along with quality.

 The evidence that our thinking works, lies in our first batch of Tahoe graduates. 30% of top performers got jobs and/or internships in the local semiconductor companies. With one year of work experience in relevant projects, these graduates will be able to apply overseas and secure a much better paying job.

Please refer to student testimonials and look at the students with who joined various companies recently.

https://www.facebook.com/tahoebd

Tahoe is aiming to turn the highest level of educated mass in technology to an asset for the country. At the moment the Electrical and computer engineers as well as the Computer Science graduates are working on either power sector, or enter banks or are doing some basic programming for various companies in Bangladesh. Our goal is to diversify this work force and provide them skills in another lucrative field, chip design thereby changing Bangladesh into a Silicon Delta, just like the Silicon Valley in USA.

Since we are a pilot project and have already gone through one session, we can safely say that we will be serving all 100+ public and private universities. Our first session started with 45 students in two fields, of the final graduates we have provided jobs to 30%. Creating jobs is the main focus, although the number is low, it is very high paying jobs, contracts [if you will] from companies in Silicon Valley. 

If we can secure funding we will introduce these classes in various places and attract more students. With the skill from our institute, they can not only secure jobs locally but can also compete for jobs in countries like China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan.

As a long term goal, our achievement will be in bringing in companies from Silicon Valley who will have their ODCs [Off-shore design centers] in the heart of the capital. We envision 500-1000 skilled chip design workers in next 5 years.

Our goal is to create employment for the youths in Bangladesh but in a very niche area. It is much easier to focus on programming or other software and train a critical mass for low level high tech world. Our youths lag the proper skills to work in chip design and other semiconductor jobs. We strive to make this skill available for students who want to get trained and dream of a career in Chip Design. Our goal is to bring jobs in Bangladesh, so we will take the top performers and give them the environment to work from Bangladesh as remote Chip Design workers. Within one year we hope to have 50-100 such skilled workers available for any contract job from Silicon Valley.

It is a uphill climb but a journey we must take. if we fail to seize this moment our educated youths will be left behind from this lucrative market. It is not good enough to have a few handful of graduates showing up in USA every year by their own merit and establishing themselves as Chip Designers. Bangladesh needs help to make this dramatic move, we at Tahoe are willing to take the challenge to make Bangladesh a recognizable force in Chip Design just like her position in RMG sector. In 5 years time, with proper funding, we hope to make Bangladesh a go to country for Chip Design work.  

In order to create a Chip Design revolution in Bangladesh, consistent and rapid growth is needed for Tahoe. Some of the barriers we are facing are:

1. Financial 

• support is needed to help students pay the $714 tuition for 4 months, often times we have to bear this cost for underprivileged students
• we need support to be able to purchase the expensive licenses  in order for the graduating students to continue working on our payroll till they get some job
• need support for infrastructure and growth in inner cities in Bangladesh

2. Market

• since VLSI is relatively new field in Bangladesh, a lot of marketing is needed for awareness
• locally we just have 3 semiconductor companies, need to grow more companies locally as well as need support to send these students in foreign markets which have chip design engineer shortage like China, Malaysia, Taiwan.

• In order to bring in more students to study VLSI concepts, we are offering the course at 50% of its original cost. 
• License is a huge cost, right now we are partnering with United International University to use their Labs for the course. Eventually we need the licenses to keep the students on projects which will land them jobs. This is our one of the major issues.
• We want to grow, lack of enough funds have us offering classes to 20-25 students in one batch. This is the best we can do under our current financial situation.
• For marketing we are approaching various universities within Dhaka and having seminars and work-shops. We need more of these seminars and work-shops to reach critical mass.

N/A

Full-time: 2

Part-time: 4

Contractors: 5

Three of the founding members of Tahoe have each 20+ years of working in Semiconductor Industry in Silicon Valley. All of the founders of Tahoe have degrees from US universities. We have worked in various aspects of Chip Design starting from Architecture, top Design, Verification, Pre and Post Silicon Validation, Taping out latest technology products for complex Intel processors to small smart phone chips. All of us have gone through various product cycles and know the exact knowledge and expertise needed which can help in the placement of our graduates. 

Our philosophy at Tahoe is to give hands-on training using the latest technology tools of chip design area. We work with students in 1:1 sessions to help them ramp up on these technologies and eventually secure a chip design job.

We are partnering with United International University who provide us the Laboratory and class-room to conduct our training. Our other major partner is Ulkasemi [a semiconductor company in Bangladesh] who have agreed to provide employment to our top 20% graduates. 

We also partnered with 3ST Technologies in India who are providing us with the various course and sometimes Lab materials. They are also helping us to train our trainers, a program we call TTT [train the trainers].

Tahoe has partnered with some local universities to bring the concept of learning chip design in depth to the engineering graduates. Tahoe's goal is to show students other alternatives for their career apart from power and cell phone industries. Tahoe caters to all graduates or professionals of engineering as well as computer science discipline. The beneficiaries are not only the graduates who are getting the hands-on training required to make them employable to the chip design world, but also we are helping the local semiconductor companies by providing the right skill set in these graduates. It helps the local companies to employ our graduates and get them in projects directly. Our training are also sought after by lecturers and lab assistants in universities as they themselves may not have the right skill set to conduct the labs and use the tools to teach the concepts of chip design.

We are providing a boot-camp style training for sixteen weeks, five days a week, without exception. The training includes lectures as well as hands-on exercise on latest technologies and methodologies. This training is undoubtedly the first of its kind in Bangladesh, and we ask for a minimum fee of Tk. 60,000 to provide for our cost. A outside funding will ensure we can offer this to all levels of people and take this to universities outside Dhaka.

At this time we have started the training with a minimum cost of Tk. 60,000 and giving discounts to students who need it. Our goal is to establish yet another section of economic growth in Bangladesh. Once we are able to provide the graduates with their desired jobs, which are high paying jobs, we will be able to mark up our cost of training. We are hoping to break it even after 5 successful batches. Chip design jobs are high paying jobs, our goal is to get a significant section of our engineering graduates to choose to persue a career in chip design by showing them a road map to their success. When chip design jobs will be a part of Bangladesh economy, many other sectors will rise with it. So at this time the financial sustainability seems pretty hard to achieve but we want to take the risk and propel the country in the right direction for the sake of our next generation.

Our goal at Tahoe is to create skilled workforce and employment in the Semiconductor market for Bangladesh. With the fund we have we are able to provide such training to 20-30 students per session. Also we are unable to provide a work space and facility for them to keep training till they get paid projects or can secure employment abroad. A fund from Tiger IT Foundation will help us create Chip Design engineers at a much faster pace, help us acquire licenses for in house project work for practical training purposes and start creating jobs in this field. Chip Design is a very lucrative market but like all start-ups, we need to spend on infrastructure and create skilled resources. Another goal for us is to make sure we can operate in the inner cities away from Dhaka and bring this opportunity to the students in other remote parts of Bangladesh. Funding will ensure that we can jump start the industry all over Bangladesh and once the Chip Design companies see the pool of skilled workers, they will start giving work as well as open their own ODCs [off-site design centers] here in Bangladesh. Chip Design will eventually come to Bangladesh and thousands of high paying jobs will be created with or without Tahoe. We at Tahoe strongly believe, we can play a crucial role in bringing in the knowledge and creating a road-map in reaching that milestone.

Countries like Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia are all big names in Chip Design or Semiconductor world. All these countries got boost from their government, in terms of welcoming the Chip Design companies to come and invest in their countries. Also their government pro-actively bought the tools [very expensive soft ware tools from Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics] and created incubators for trained workforce to come in and work on projects to gain experience. This in turn created small start-ups all of them able to procure contract jobs from big names like Intel, Apple, Samsung, TSMC, etc. If Tiger IT can help us work with the government to enable such incubators, open for all to come and work and use the resource, we can very quickly become a part of the global Semiconductor market.

For our training institute Tahoe to thrive it is very important to create partnerships with local semiconductor companies, local universities, government organizations like LICT. Other partnerships that are helpful will be with semiconductor tool companies like Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics and last but not least Silicon Valley chip design companies.