Anku Jain is presently the Managing Director of MediaTek India. He is heading MediaTek’s pan India operations with offices in Noida, Bangalore and Mumbai. He is also responsible for heading multiple R&D business units in Noida in addition to Indian Govt relations. MediaTek Inc. is a leading Taiwan-based global fabless semiconductor company that powers more than 1.5 billion devices a year and is a leader in developing innovative systems-on-chip (SoC) for mobile devices, home entertainment, connectivity and IoT products.
Anku’s authenticity, analytical bent of mine, deep dive approach and the highest level of integrity has won him numerous accolades whilst creating and growing MediaTek’s business in India. With experience spanning over 25 years, he has been focused on building strong teams and grooming leaders who can deliver on the global stage. Anku’s expertise includes business leadership, strategy, managing cross-cultural teams, site operations and engineering proficiency related to innovations in embedded software, telecom, semiconductor and mobile phone design. He has multiple patents in the field of mobile telephony.
Anku Jain ( Managing Director, MediaTek)
He has a B. Tech. degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi and has completed an executive business management course from IIM, Calcutta. Anku is an adventure freak and an ardent sportsperson. He regularly does long distance running and cycling. His recent exploits include a successful climb to the Mt. Everest base camp.
Beyond his academic pursuits, Anku passionately supports budding entrepreneurs as an Angel investor and mentor. He relates to their efforts and enthusiasm, having himself been a founding member of Pixtel Communications and having transformed it from a services-centric technology startup to a product company which eventually led it to get acquired by MediaTek Inc. for intellectual property.
Mr Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central and Co-Founder,XR central) recently had an interaction with Mr Anku Jain. Here are some excerpts from the interaction:
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): To Start with, could you please tell us a bit more about MediaTek for which there’s so much general perspective and we’ll move towards the gaming.
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek) : MediaTek is a Chipset Company. We have a fabulous Google administration. We design chipsets for various devices.So smartphones are the most well-known, but that is about over 50,000 revenue. But we have a lot of other devices like smart TVs and routers and so on. We have a very great leading position in all these devices. And we are building chips for all devices. So they’re actually pervasive in progress that way. Now from a gaming point of view, we realized a few years ago that gaming is a very Bond aspect. So we wanted to put some special focus.
And a few years ago, we came out with a chipset called the Helio G series out there. We realized gaming is very important. Three years ago, we came out together with a specific chipset called Helio GCS And there we have something called a hyperengine technology. It was a starting point. And of course, we have come very far in that aspect. What are the things that irritate you? You are very emotional while in a game. And the incoming call comes, you actually don’t care what the call is.And an incoming call really irritates you, even though it may be very important. But you want to still play the game and win the game over. So at that time, this hyper engine technology what we did was it’s such a thing happens.
If you are in a home situation using Wi-Fi, and then you go out or let’s say what type of companies. So there was a very seamless transfer from recruitment transfer from Wi-Fi to your 4G.Again, the game had to stop it otherwise. So this was very seamless and the gamer will not get to know that so there was a disruption of this networking change. So these are the kind of things which were brought in.And that was adopted very well by the gaming community. And now, of course, we have the in latest series we have is what’s called dimensity chipsets, which is for 5G so all of them are 5G enables. And there we have the latest version of hyperengine, which is 5.0. And it’s going to evolve with time.
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): You introduce new features every with every iteration of yours.So we’ll take a step back, also take me through your journey. Because generally, our audience is of gamers.They also want to understand what’s your technologist’s journey through an industry like this. Folks who know intel and others. But I think it’s a very interesting journey for us to know.
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek): I’ll tell you the journey, So I graduated from IIT Delhi In 1992. I did my B.tech in computer science at that time. And then I worked on many small startups. At that time, people generally did not know much about Startups.
So I worked for several companies and those names we probably would know. So I let them not mention them. But finally, I was a founding member of a company called pixtel. In the year 2000.after 8 years of my engineering. And we were developing from scratch with some user interface and graphic engine and all that. If you want to write A, there was an intelligence and we actually wrote those things. We didn’t just rely on OS. So our team wrote all that. And then at that time, we had a customer for us. we were coming up just starting venturing into the phones business. For the records, mostly about the CD ROM project and all that. So they started a business. And they were a customer with zero sales at that time, for the net. And then we worked closely and it worked very well. And then I became a part of MediaTek so I’ve been part of MediaTek since 2004.
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): You know I asked you this is also because a lot of times kids today, when you talk about startups, they are like funding and all about funding But there’s a lot of Resilience and patience which you need in that journey.
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek): That is something maybe we are trying to address. But right now, this current winter of funding is rivalling it. So it is bringing some sanity to this. Not only about growth, but growth and profitability. Unit economics are so much. So I think that is something which is improving now. At least people are. It will bring to realize growth in top line is not the only thing.
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): It’s not just a revenue multiple you need to have. You have to have some action.
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek): This is a model for me. So yeah, that’s catching up. But so that is my story. And from a gaming point of view, actually, as I mentioned in the panel. I’ve stayed at Atari. We bought cartridges for a game like asteroids, which is so super expensive.
Mr Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): Generally, what do you see, what’s next for MediaTek, and what are the cool new things you working on? which of course you can share
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek): One Thing is, Of course, this project IT transition itself from a business point of view. It’s a great transition for us. Because we feel that 5G is going to be everywhere, so we have both the sub-six and Mm wave technology with us. And so this is one of the greatest things right now. We think that we’ll keep innovating on this. And this is going to create a great business opportunity for us. And then metaverse was also able to actually Have a business unit.
Because we feel that AR and VR, but I think this is going to the future. Certainly. And from a startup point of view, a lot of companies are getting funded, although it was so, this year we are betting on it. And again, the key grains that we have apart from computing power on our TA Asia, would be small, right? All those things.
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): That’s what I was going to mention that you as a design house, have most of the ingredients. You can just be a software company. What we bring to the table is the development part of this experience part of it because that’s also a big challenge in the industry.
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek): The adoption will take time. By 2030 Huge percentage of people will start spending hours on metaverse.
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): The interesting part is tomorrow I meet the skill council and we showcasing them our XR content. So I think that’s where it’s changing. Because now people are realizing it could be Oculus, could be a media tech power device. That’s where it’s changing, right? Because now when it becomes easier, now with the quest you don’t need wires. So that’s a big change very quickly. And that’s what we’ve seen as a very quick change happening in the industry.
Anku Jain (Managing Director, MediaTek): So either way, maybe you can educate us, but I think I feel enterprise adoption will be first.
Shrey Mishra (Founder, Gaming Central): Make some time to be able to apply the events to also just get started. We have our own platform called meta cube.
