In today’s era where technology and business trends are changing at a lightning speed, it is highly needed to equip the corporate workforce and the next-gen engineers with relevant skill-set. Companies understanding this are extensively looking for corporate training entities who are offering such defined courses. Maven Silicon is one such pioneer in training services companies that offer engrossing VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) Courses for the engineers to stay ahead of the industry trends and since Maven Silicon is known for its power-packed VLSI courses, Praveena G., Co-Founder & Managing Director at Maven Silicon is passionately domineering the training industry empowering the learners and making them job ready in the semiconductors industry.

Engaging in a conversation with the Women Entrepreneur magazine, Praveena navigates us through her entrepreneurial journey in the VLSI training services and the semiconductor industry.

Tell us about your early educational journey and prior industry experience. What motivated you to establish Maven Silicon?

Well, Basically, I am an electronics engineer with B.E. in Electronics and Communications from Madras University. I have always been very passionate about enabling the young generation and had a flair for teaching. I started my career in academia, teaching core electronics subjects like Digital electronics, Verilog HDL, and VHDL programming. Life evolved with marriage and a beautiful child but my passion for teaching continued and I made sure to make time for it.

My life partner, Siva who is the CEO and founder of Maven Silicon, was already a part of the EDA industry at that time. His experience, skills, passion, and our will together led to the incep­tion of Maven Silicon.

We started from a small rented set up and built the company from scratch. While my partner was involved in grooming the idea and business expansion activities, I led the training and day-to-day activities. We delivered excellent batches of VLSI pro­fessionals and shortly we started receiving good responses from the industry and academia.

How would you define Maven Silicon? What are the different services that the company specializes in? Maven Silicon is a top-class VLSI training services company for more than a decade. Our highly experi­enced trainers deliver various VLSI training courses in Logic Design, Design Verification [DV], Design For Test [DFT], Physical Design [PD], ARM, and RISC-V in offline, online, part-time, and weekend modes. With our corpo­rate training & placement services, we have helped our clients across the globe in upskilling their workforce and hiring the best VLSI talent. We are also an ARM Approved Training Partner and a global training partner of RISC-V International. We are partnered with top EDA companies Synopsys and Siemens as well.

Tell us about your roles as Maven Silicon’s Co- Founder & Managing Director. What are the primary focus areas in your current role?

My role as a Co-Founder is very dynamic and challenging. If my co-founder looks after the technology part of the company, I take charge of the implementation across all verticals. My main objective is to create an environment of trust, respect, and integrity for our customers and employees, and I'm completely vested in maintaining that. At Maven Silicon, we maintain a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture, and as a leader, my focus is also identifying the next generation of leaders and making Maven Silicon, absolutely the best.

What are some of the most pressing challenges you encounter in your current role? How do you successfully mitigate these challenges?

Well, like others, hiring the right people was a bit of a challenge even for us. But once people are on-board, and experience the culture in terms of learning, re­muneration, and work-life balance, there is no turning back. We have many employees with us for 5+ years which is a testament to our empowering work culture.

Another work area that is very close to my heart is women in the workplace. While I talk about it, I remi­nisce about my bitter-sweet memories of being a work­ing Mom. I still recollect the visuals of my little one coming back from school and curling up on the couch at my office. At Maven Silicon, we are empathetic to working women and their challenges. We have women ruling all our spaces, Training, Finance, Operations, and Marketing. You see our happy Boss ladies doing it all.

What are some of the most significant milestones you have achieved throughout your professional journey?

During this entrepreneurial journey at Maven Silicon, we founded a design services company Aceic Design Technologies to give opportunities to the talented train­ees of Maven Silicon. Later our Aceic engineering team was acquired by a US-based MNC.

At Maven Silicon, we were awarded with a long-term contract by a top US-based MNC specializing in Wireless Technology towards upskilling their huge VLSI global workforce. We also partnered with the world’s largest mobile manufacturer to train their VLSI engi­neers online. We are amongst the first, to deliver the VLSI training online, globally at this scale. Now, we are training 500+ corporates every quarter using our VLSI training solutions. While the world was at a standstill during the COVID crisis, we continued the training through our cloud-based training solutions and trained 500+ NCGs. Giving back to the community has always been an integral part of our vision. Through our corpo­rate social responsibility initiative, 'Maven Silicon for the Community', we offered VLSI SOC Design Course for free to 5000+ Engineers. We have successfully intro­duced the pre-onboarding courses in the universities in collaboration with our industry partners to give expo­sure to the engineers in the semiconductor industry to resolve the skill gap and resource scarcity.

In recent years, we have established a strong global footprint and addressed the training requirements of VLSI aspirants and organizations across the world.

“We have established a strong global footprint & addressed the training requirements of vlsi aspirants & organizations across the world”

What has been the driving force behind your success as a professional?

Enabling! Be it our trainees or employees.  Adding value to the businesses in the Semiconductor industry by supporting them with highly skilled re­sources and effective training solutions is our mission and the driving force. With this determination, we have successfully placed 5000 engineers till now.

Drawing from your experience as a business leader, what would your advice be to young women and girls who also aspire to become business leaders and entrepreneurs in the future?

Being a woman is a powerful feeling, acknowledge it first. Identify your passion, get the resources, and do not look back. Strength, Righteousness, Selflessness, Compassion, and Creativity, are our inbuilt traits. And that’s all you need! Having a family, and being a mom is a blessing and not an obstacle. Just trust yourself, in the process. It actually makes you more efficient, one heck of a multitasker, patient, and a very empathetic listener. And isn’t that what leadership is all about? Don’t believe in any distinction between men and women. Women have and will continue to rise and shine.

Praveena G.,  CO-Founder & Managing Director,  Maven Silicon

Praveena holds 18+ years of experience in the education industry responsible for the company's business, operations, and growth. Her role includes operations, project executions, and extending the overall business model through strategic partnerships for the organization.

Maven Silicon is a top-class VLSI training services company for more than a decade. At present, They train 1000+ chip designers per year. They have deployed 5000+ VLSI engineers in the semiconductor industry globally and emerged as a Centre of Excellence in VLSI. Praveena has been working closely with academia and Industry to create new business models to expand and grow Maven Silicon's market share. Prior to Co-founding Maven Silicon, she worked extensively as a Teaching Faculty in academia.