Electronics Era: Explain embedUR as a company in brief—its journey, vision, and achievements?
Mr. Rajesh: To give you a brief background about me, I was born and raised in Chennai. I went to school here and later to another institution in Tamil Nadu before moving to the US. I worked for ten years in multiple corporations, and in 2004, I started embedUR Systems. The focus was on building embedded software for connected devices.
Since then, we’ve grown steadily. I established the Chennai office in 2008, and today we have a team of around 350+ people based here. Over the last five years, our key specialties have evolved into Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). While we don’t design or build chips, we play a crucial role by supporting companies that do. We build the software that sits around those chips and enables their functionality for end customers.
Right now, edge intelligence is a major growth area for us. We’re seeing strong traction both from partners and customers globally. That’s a brief summary of our journey so far.
Electronics Era: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Mr. Rajesh: We operate in three primary areas. First, we function as an extended R&D team for our clients, building custom software for their products. Many of our customers are large networking vendors.
Second, we develop custom embedded software for devices that our clients sell globally. This includes Wi-Fi management software used for managing wireless radios in home internet routers. This software is deployed in many regions for ISPs and service providers.
The third area is edge intelligence. This is where we are experiencing tremendous growth. Over the last three to four years, we’ve expanded significantly into IoT and embedded software for IoT devices. So, while we started with traditional services and built custom software products, edge intelligence is now a key pillar of our business.
Electronics Era: How does embedUR’s software power over 100 million devices globally?
Mr. Rajesh: Our customers are global players, and over the past 20 years, we’ve worked with over 100 clients on a wide range of products. These products are deployed across the globe, and many of them include our software.
Through these deployments, especially in service providers’ networks where our software is installed in millions of homes, our footprint has grown significantly. Twenty years of consistent engineering and product development have given us exposure to a vast range of global customers and use cases.
Electronics Era: How does embedUR play a vital role in developing cost-effective AI chips for India in collaboration with global semiconductor and silicon players?
Mr. Rajesh: To clarify, we don’t develop AI chips ourselves. But we help customers who do. For example, Synaptics—a US-based chip company—is one of our key partners. Similarly, we work closely with STMicroelectronics. These companies develop low-cost chips with built-in AI engines, and they need companies like us to build custom software and applications that enable their customers to use these chips effectively. That’s where we come in.
Electronics Era: What are the company’s expansion plans in India for the future?
Mr. Rajesh: Our goal is to continue hiring and developing engineering talent over the next five years, particularly in our Chennai office. We’re committed to training and cross-training our team across wireless, Bluetooth, artificial intelligence, edge intelligence, and IoT.
We’ve publicly announced partnerships with companies like Infineon, STMicroelectronics, and Synaptics. These partnerships are driving our growth and will continue to fuel the development of products for their global customer bases.
Electronics Era: How are Indian engineering teams driving transformation for global clients, according to you?
Mr. Rajesh: Today, a majority of global capability centers (GCCs) are located in India. European and American companies have established major development centers here, and they also collaborate with companies like ours to extend their talent pool.
A significant portion of AI innovation, product development, and engineering is now happening in India—especially in Tamil Nadu and Chennai, which have a highly skilled talent pool.
Electronics Era: How does embedUR help large enterprises accelerate time-to-market with edge AI capabilities?
Mr. Rajesh: With 20 years of experience, we bring deep expertise in embedded systems. We often help our clients identify the most cost-optimized platform for their product development. Since we already have several software components prebuilt, we enable faster implementation.
This allows businesses—from mid-sized firms to large enterprises—to take products to market much faster. For example, reducing a product development cycle from 24 months to 14 or 15 months can significantly impact their top and bottom lines.
Electronics Era: What is your investment trajectory in R&D for contextual and small language models (CLMs and SLMs) for specialized use cases?
Mr. Rajesh: We are investing heavily in this area. Our specialty is not just small language models but extremely tiny models that can run on low-cost, constrained platforms. We’ve developed our own platform called ModelNova.ai, which currently hosts around 100+ models. It’s one of the largest collections of tiny models available globally. This platform allows users to explore and deploy various applications, including those suited for devices like the Raspberry Pi, enabling low-cost product development right out of the box.
