IoT and Embedded Systems | Rajesh Subramaniam

About Rajesh Subramaniam

As Founder and CEO, Rajesh has led embedUR systems through a decade of profitability and successive growth averaging 35% per year, and has built a loyal customer base among F500 Network and Telecom equipment providers.

With a Masters in Electrical Engineering from University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and an unrelenting determination, Rajesh rose quickly through the engineering management ranks at various startups and public companies such as Schlumberger, Bay Networks, Atoga Systems and ARRIS, designing enterprise and carrier network equipment during the 90’s Silicon Valley boom.

These experiences led Rajesh to envision a flourishing market for embedded-systems for networking equipment and connected devices, so in 2004, together with others from Atoga he founded embedUR.

Episode Transcript of: IoT and Embedded Systems | Rajesh Subramaniam

Alan
Welcome back. Joining me today is Rajesh Subramaniam. He is the founder and the CEO of embed your systems. Rajesh, welcome to the show.

Rajesh
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Alan
So for the listeners, Rajesh, Can you give background of your restart from your education level, your experience prior to badger and what brought you up for the inspiration of this company?

Rajesh
Again, first of all, thanks to you, and thanks to everybody in the studio for giving me an opportunity to be here. It’s great to be back here and talking to you. 1994 is when I came came into the country, actually 1992 is when I came into the country, grew up in India, southern part of India in a city called Chennai. And I went to school there masters, I did my bachelor’s in electrical engineering moved to the United States 92 to 94, finished, my masters moved to the Silicon Valley. And this was a time when there were a lot of startups around Silicon Valley. Telecom was booming. Internet was a big thing, Netscape. I mean, I still remember the days where people use us Gopher, and then Netscape and then Google and was a huge transformation. I was looking around got a few jobs in multiple corporations. And I eventually thought that there’s an ideal opportunity being in Silicon Valley, to be able to make a difference in the industry that I was working in. And as a result, with two other colleagues of mine decided to start embed your systems. I had been to three, two startups and a big company. And I had the mindset where, you know, I’ve been through a big company, I’ve been through a small company, maybe this is a time to go out on my own, and start and see how it progresses. And so we started in video systems in 2004, July, and the focus was going to be supporting service providers, and basically telecom and data networking equipment vendors, and so called OEMs. And being able to provide, which will r&d and product engineering for them. So that is how I got started.

Alan
And when you started? Did you actually have clients lined up? Or did you just start with a concept to plan and vision and then say, well figure that out later,

Rajesh
It’s, well, there were no customers first. So we had this grand vision of starting, and we had a business plan. And we laid out certain metrics. And we said, we’re going to try this for nine months, or 10 months to begin with. So the goal was to start, we put together a plan in August of 2004, September of 2004, this plan was well formulated. And in Jan of 2005, we took it to action. And we said, let’s stick with this plan for seven to eight months. And let’s see if we sign up customers. So we started approaching customers, and eventually we signed up our first customer on July or August. So six to seven months was real hard work, and being focused, follow one course and to being successful. So it was waiting it out and making sure that we find the right customer to be able to start the process of building the company.

Alan
What was it like getting your first customer?

Rajesh
Oh, it was like winning Super Bowl, you know, this was, you know, I see players just hitting the turf and they’re crying. And, you know, it was it was like, it was a testament to staying the course persevering always wins. And it was I still I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m still having I’m having goosebumps, the moment I think of that experience. Because it was you end up doubting yourself through time. And you have responsibilities. I mean, I had two kids who were really small. My younger one was two years old. My older one was five years old. And I’m going like, Am I doing the right thing here? I mean, I don’t have a paycheck, after being used to this semi monthly paycheck coming in. I don’t have a paycheck. And I’m going like, oh my god, is this going to work out? But then I said, this is my opportunity. I got to go big and try it. And when the first customer came in, it was like, yes. And it was it was phenomenal.

Alan
Now the Badgers specializes in embedded systems. Yep. And for the listeners, can you explain what is an embedded system.

Rajesh
So an embedded system most of the time, there are a lot of these electronic devices that you buy from Best Buy from Amazon, from different stores target wherever and you look at it as an electronic box. It’s a big black box. But there are a lot of things that happen within the box. There’s a silicon in it, which is basically processes and other hardware that manifests that is manufactured by these big silicon companies example likes of Intel likes of Qualcomm, Marwell, Broadcom and many others. And they all have to be designed in together and there is some special software that goes in to the system to build the capability of the system. So if you buy a Fitbit, I mean it’s kind of like tronics and it’s got software in it. If you buy a router from BestBuy, it’s got electronics in it, it’s got software in it. And if you buy any other device, which is an electronic gadget, it’s a combination of all of this to us, we call this an embedded system, which has its own processes, its own peripheral electronics, and its own software. And all these come together to make this one big box.

Alan
I’m visiting here today, with Rajesh Subramaniam. And Rejesh, I need to take a quick break. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and busy here today with Rajesh Subramaniam He is the founder of adventure and Rajesh In the previous segment, we talked about embedded systems and how they applied to electronic devices. What’s the fastest area in the industry of embedded systems today growth?

Rajesh
Well, there are a lot of different things that have happened over the last five to eight years. If you were to look at it, the Internet of Things is a big vertical that’s growing really, really fast. Sensors, electronics, wearables, and internet of things associated with all of these is a very fast growing segment. And on top of that, we have devices, especially wireless, which has just grown and continues to grow. When I’m talking about wireless, I’m talking about licensed spectrum, wireless, unlicensed spectrum wireless. And the combination of all of this is led to a big infrastructure growth as well, in terms of traditional switching equipment has become important. And that is growing fast data center businesses are going fast cloud is going fast growing fast as a result, all of this is pushing more devices into the market. And the growth segment is looking huge. So to answer your question, IoT is a big thing that’s proliferating across the board. And since we are specialized in Wi Fi, which is unlicensed spectrum Wi Fi, that is a growth segment that we are seeing, which continues to build momentum and continues to grow across the world.

Alan
So in the area of when you look at the development of this new technology, the 5g, how’s that going to affect your industry?

Rajesh
I think as technologies, as new technologies come in, they always create disruptions. For us, there are a lot of growth indicators and growth factors. So this machine to machine, the moment the 5g and the 4g and LTE revolution to place, what you call m to m or machine to machine communication increased tremendously. So as a result, when this communication increases tremendously, there are applications, the killer apps that come into play. So we believe that this is going to enable more IoT, more growth in IoT, because at the end of the day, you need to be able to communicate over the internet, and 5g and all of this technology, and even Wi Fi, there’s a new standard that’s come out called 70x. And that’s going to be launched probably later this year by many different companies around the world. And all of this put together along with 5g and licensed and unlicensed Wi Fi is only going to increase the velocity with which these IoT or Internet of Things devices are going to proliferate the market.

Alan
You know, the when you look at net neutrality, I guess the FCC is starting to get involved with with things and give some background what’s going on there.

Rajesh
I think there are a lot of different views about this topic. And every person shares a specific concern or a viewpoint. And you know, what is it? I mean, net neutrality is basically saying, do all of us have equal rights to being able to use the internet or the capacity with which we consume content? And and can somebody prioritize and monetize it differently for different services. And there are a lot of arguments for and against. But I believe we should leave it. I mean, being a capitalistic society, I believe that the companies that have invested in the infrastructure are the ones that should be able to at least reap the benefits of all this huge infrastructure investment that they put in. And as a result, there should be some consideration towards these big corporations, service providers, especially all the people who are putting all of this infrastructure together to be able to reap the benefits and then taper it off so that everybody gets an equal piece of the pie. Once that investment Lamacq cost is amortized across a span of several years.

Alan
So in an example here, if it’s a, pg&e puts all the power lines up, someone comes along and says, the power lines are up, I should be able to use

Rajesh
exactly you think it’s fair game now. Yeah, it’s fair game. Now, I should be able to use the power lines. I mean, everybody uses it. So it doesn’t make sense. I mean, pg&e is for a profit for profit business. And at the end of the day, pg&e has to monetize it. So the moment they monetize it, yes, there’s always talk about big corporations pay themselves first before they take care of the customers, but incentivize the people who have invested money in it to be able to put back more money into the business. And it’s only better for customers in the long run.

Alan
So in the in this world of capitalism, it’s it makes sense to let people continue to monetize.

Rajesh
Exactly and the moment if people step in, and participate in arguing, who gets walked and it becomes comfortable.

Alan
Okay, I’m visiting here today with we’re just so rainy, and I need to take another break. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m busy here today with Rajesh Subramaniam. And we’re talking about embedded systems and you know, the state of the industry. And then I’m gonna turn the page of the future of the Internet of Things. What do you see all this going?

Rajesh
Oh, wow, this is a great question. What is happening is devices are becoming commodities. I mean, if you really think about that, Silicon Valley is stepping up the game, in terms of taking innovative approaches to software, and how we solve problems. Devices are going to be a commodity business, by which I mean, monetization is going to start coming down in terms of profitability on devices, which means innovative solutions, cloud computing, being able to provide algorithms in the cloud, understanding human behavior, and solving problems based on behavior and data being collected is the next big thing that is taking shape. So securing data, collecting data, analyzing data, mining data, having algorithms then decipher the data and creating patterns. These are the big things that are happening today. And if you look at the cloud technology, Amazon, with Amazon Web Services, they have been at the forefront of this, this is this is a genius move. And it’s just, I’m just completely amazed with the vision that Jeff Bezos had when he first started this whole Amazon Web Services, and they put a lot of other companies out of business. And what that what this does is gives anybody access to a huge compute platform, where it can run specific algorithms and shape behaviors, and then control multiple things in different facets of life on a daily basis. And that’s where this is going.

Alan
What do you see as the most beneficial application.

Rajesh
So I was talking to somebody that a lot of different applications, I was talking to somebody where, you know, I was talking to this, this person from a chip company is a very, very senior leader. And he was talking about, oh, we can use Wi Fi technology where these aps that are sitting in your house can read, you know, the different aspects of your heartbeat, and sense your heartbeat. And if the heartbeat slows down, can immediately trigger a alarm to the cloud, which then triggers you know, a health monitoring system to be able to come in and, in fact, enable you to stop heart attacks, or even create a time interval where the response time is completely completely accelerated and save lives. I mean, so many different things are happening, where all of this data, like I said, being able to collect data, and being able to analyze data, health, transportation, automation, industrial, I mean, every aspect of life is going to change based on what we do to autonomous cars. Again, it’s all about how the car moves. What sensors do you have collecting all the data, and this huge Compute Engine then directs the car to do to do the right thing.

Alan
Do you see the depth definite leader in the area of artificial intelligence is this industry is coming out?

Rajesh
When you can, there are many different companies. Again, there are multiple verticals, in terms of what what we see, of course, Tesla has already done a lot of things with this autonomous car self driving cars, and Google was coming in, and Apple is, is already coming in with a lot of different innovation. So I wouldn’t say there’s one single company that’s spearheading this. But again, the company that’s provided the platform and the infrastructure is, is Amazon, and they’ve come up with Alexa. And they’ve kind of tried to pivot the whole industry there. And it becomes very important, I want to make a point here. If the internet was not as fast as it is today, none of this would have happened. Because it goes back to the fundamental philosophy where you got to have a strong and a big pipe. Yeah, the pipe was enabled with fiber, light, 10 gig, multiple gig fast transportation. Once that was enabled infrastructure, Amazon came in, many other companies followed suit, cloud computing and infrastructure. Now we have the base platform set in, and every vertical now has an opportunity to participate and create a difference.

Alan
Where do you see embedded systems going into the five years into the future here?

Rajesh
Like I said, I mean, we we’ve been working on hardware, and we’ve been working on software as well, but our hardware revenue stream has decreased tremendously. So we do maybe one person or even zero, I would say, in the last two, three years, and it’s all significant software, where we believe we can add a difference in this old system. ecosystem is where we build software. So Open Networking, software, defined networking, open devices, being able to compute at the cloud, and making the devices really thin. So the devices are manufactured out of the country, focus on low price, but bring in monetizable value by creating sub sub subscription services, and then enabling different applications on top of that, that’s where we see this going. And that’s where we’re trying to prevent that barrier to that, where to

Alan
go these chips in the beginning smaller and smaller and smaller.

Rajesh
Absolutely. I mean, an SOC system on a chip. I mean, everything is smaller now. I mean, every device is getting smaller, it’s more compact, but he does a lot more

Alan
I’m visiting here today with Rajesh Subramaniam and he’s the founder and the CEO of embed your system. So we’re just as someone who is interested in engaging your services or getting a hold of you, how would they go about that?

Rajesh
They can visit us www.embedded.com. And then there’s an email they can fill in a form. It goes to our marketing department, and then they will reach out and support and take any calls and see how we can support our future customers and prospective customers.

Alan
Thanks for being on today’s show. Well, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. We’ll be right back after these messages.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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