Talking Semiconductors In Rural Tamil Nadu: Meet Ananthan Ayyasamy, Former Intel Engineering Director, Now State BJP Leader Slogging It Out In Tenkasi

Ananthan Ayyasamy, popularly known as 'Tenkasi Ananthan', is the man behind Startup Tenkasi and the vice-president of the Tamil Nadu Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) overseas cell.

Before plunging full time into politics, Ananthan worked with Intel in the field of chip design for over two decades and rose to the position of Director of Engineering. He also has a real estate brokerage business in the US, which is being looked after by his wife, as he is in India.

My day started with Harichandran, a relative of Ananthan, picking me up from the hotel in Rajapalayam, where I was staying. Rajapalayam is the nearest big town to Ananthan's village, Viswanathaperi. 

Before my meeting Ananthan, I had done some reading on Tenkasi. The Tenkasi Lok Sabha constituency, for one, is spread over the two districts of Tenkasi and Virudhunagar. Rajapalayam, while falling under the Tenkasi Lok Sabha constituency, is part of the Virudhunagar district.

Harichandran told me it would take about half an hour to reach Ananthan’s home and so I decided to use the commute time to ask him a few questions.

While on the way, Harichandran told me about himself. He had played judo at the state level and was now running a construction company that is involved in laying a Cauvery water pipeline between Tiruchirapalli and Ramanathapuram. 

“Interesting”, I said. I had not heard of the project till then. 

Our conversation then veered towards land prices. Pointing to the vacant lands on both sides of the road, he said that land is not very costly here and a cent of land could be purchased for Rs 1 lakh. 

"How’s it like in the town?," I ask. "4 Lakhs per cent", he said. 

(A cent is 453.56 square feet. It is a land measure commonly used in Tamil Nadu)

By then we had entered Sivagiri, the taluka town. Harichandran told me that Viswanathaperi is a couple of kilometres from there and before going we could have a look at the school in which Ananthan studied and a chess tournament being sponsored by him.

The venue for the tournament, which was a school, was busy with the hustle and bustle of excited children, who were accompanied by their parents. I also noticed that there were a few older participants, who I was later informed, had registered to compete in the open category.

Leaving the venue with the idea to come back later, we reached Ananthan's home.

Greeting me warmly, Ananthan quickly began speaking about politics. I was left surprised by what he told me in the first five minutes. While he has the image of a 'US-returned techie' who has joined politics recently with a wish to bring about a change, that is just one part of his story.

He had earlier worked to get his younger brother, A Manoharan, elected as the AIADMK MLA from their assembly constituency, Vasudevanallur (SC) in 2016. Manoharan won the elections in 2016 and contested again in 2021 on an AIADMK ticket.

In 2021, he lost by a small margin of 2367 votes and while my mind was still processing the fact that I was with a BJP politician, whose brother had been an AIADMK MLA, days after the party decided to cut ties with the BJP, Ananthan once again surprised me by saying that he had almost accurately predicted the margin of defeat.

It was not an empty statement, as he then presented me a booklet containing details of the process he undertook to predict the outcome and the numbers involved. While he had predicted a defeat by 2358 votes, the actual number was 2367, which was just 9 more than what he had predicted.

While we continued talking, Ananthan showed me around his office-cum-home. It had a large hall, a study-cum-bedroom and a space for cooking and dining. Outside was a porch, large enough to host small meetings and programmes.

The day I happened to spend with Ananthan happened to be the birthday of former president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

It was nearing 11 AM then and we got into his car to leave for the first programme of the day, called 'Kootuvom Kooduvom' organised by the Sangh Parivar at the Kubera Anjaneyar Swamy temple in Vasudevanallur.

Pointing to the concrete houses in the village, Ananthan said, "The village was not like this 30 years back. It was mostly huts.

"Our family was poor. We had only half an acre of land. My grandfather had more land but we lost it after his death. My father was only 10 years old when my grandfather passed away. I still have documents to show that some lands originally belonged to our family.

"I did a number of jobs like working in fields owned by others in the morning and evening for which I was paid Rs 5 per month. During harvest season, I used to get one and a half kilograms of paddy for a day's work.

"When in fifth grade, I herded cattle. Around the time I was in the tenth grade, I worked in fireworks factories for Rs 1 a day and at construction sites for Rs 2-3 per day.

"As we travel, I'll show you the Dharani Sugar Mill. It was being constructed then. I used to carry 40 Kg cement bags over a 100 metre distance for the entire day and was paid Rs 10 for it.

"I used my earnings to buy books and clothes.

"It was a tough childhood. There were a number of days, when we slept hungry. Sometimes, when we did not have anything to eat, I would jump into streams which had small check dams, adjust the water flow at great risk to myself and catch fish for our meal.

"Unable to afford rice or condiments, I would often find pluck raw tamarind to have something to eat along with the fish I had caught."

By this time we had arrived at the temple, where we were greeted by party functionaries. Asked about the nature of the programme, Sankar ji, a BJYM officebearer, told me that it was a panchayat level people-connect programme being organised across the country by the Sangh Parivar.

Ananthan spoke on the topic, "Our Duty For The Development Of The Nation", after a speech by a Hindu Munnani functionary regarding Sanatana Dharma.

Among the important points he made were the need for students to learn software, an increase in job-oriented education, and the necessity to produce higher value products like cellphones in addition to lower value products like crops in order to take our economy to the next level.

We then departed for Ananthan's next stop at the Harijan Middle School, located at a village in the Veerakeralampudur taluka of Tenkasi district, where he had been invited as the chief guest to for a prize distribution ceremony. Sankar Ji and Ram Kumar, the party's Mandal Thalaivar for Vasudevanallur South, joined us in the car.

How do you see the decision of the AIADMK to cut ties with the BJP?

Answering my question, Ram Kumar stated, "Actually the AIADMK wins here because of us. The nationalist right wing vote is strong here."

Supporting the statement, Ananthan said, "After Kanyakumari, we (BJP), got the highest number of local body councillors (23) from Tenkasi district during the last local body elections, in which we contested alone.

How important is caste in deciding voting patterns? What are the major caste groups in the constituency?

“Yes, caste is an important factor here when it comes to voting in elections.

“The major caste groups are the Devendra Kula Vellalar, Mukkulathor/Thevar, the Nadars, the Yadava/Konars, Senaithalaivars, Saliyars, Pillai, Paraiyar, a sizeable population of Telugu speaking communities including Nayakkars, Naidus and the Arundhatiyars.

"Of these, the Devendra Kula Vellalar, the Paraiyar and the Arundhatiyar are Scheduled Caste communities, which forms at least 20 per cent of the votes.

“The minorities, i.e., Muslims and Christians form about 16 per cent according to estimates after the 2011 census.”

We then reached near the school, where we were welcomed by a group of children who performed Silambam. Ananthan and the other guests garlanded a photo of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

Addressing the students, Ananthan motivated them saying that he too came up from a poor background like them and if he could come this far, they could also come up in life if they study well.

The speech was followed by a prize distribution ceremony.

Back in the car, as we drove through the winding roads towards the nearest town for lunch, Ananthan showed me colourful wall paintings done by the BJP for the birthday of Prime Minister Modi, the En Mann En Makkal padayatra and those having his name, 'A Ananthan' in Tamil.

"Wall paintings give us a lot of visibility, much more than a newspaper ad. It shows our presence to the people.

"For the padayatra, we did 70,000 square feet of wall painting in the constituency. The ruling disposition was taken aback and clearly not pleased. After the padayatra, the DMK cadres went on an overdrive and did wall paintings in a way they perhaps did not do for the last couple of years."

We then stopped for lunch. We had a simple meal of rice, curries, puli kozhambu, sambhar, rasam and buttermilk.

"How was the reception to the padayatra in Tenkasi", I asked, while we were having lunch.

"The reception was great. We witnessed a spontaneous upsurge of over twenty thousand people in a town like Puliyangudi (Vasudevanallur assembly constituency). What was exceptional is that this town does not have reasons for large commuting crowd, be it a famous temple like say Srivilliputhur or a large market, that would naturally get crowds. People from nearby villages came on their own in large numbers. Annamalai found it difficult to move an inch. The police had to ask him to push his car forward a kilometre past the scheduled stop as they could not manage the crowd.

"We put in an extraordinary effort to take the message of the padayatra to the people. We put up banners and boards every few metres for a 5-7 kilometre stretch of the padayatra route in each constituency.

"It was as if it was a programme of the ruling party. See if you have to succeed in the state, you have to work on visibility like the DMK and the AIADMK."

At the restaurant, recognising Ananthan, some AIADMK and BJP functionaries came to see him.

Asked about his relation with people in the AIADMK, Ananthan said, "Lot of them know me as I had worked with them during my brother's election campaign. We do not have clashes at a local level. We have often helped each other and my brother is still a part of the AIADMK. So they have a feeling of mutual respect. It's only recently that the alliance ended."

When Ananthan's assistant walked up to the counter to pay for the lunch, he was pleasantly told that the AIADMK functionary had already paid for Ananthan and his team

After lunch, we were to go to a village where a BJP functionary, Karuppasamy of Puliyampatti village, had raised some funds for a borewell and wanted Ananthan to chip in, informed Ram Kumar.

Speaking to me Ananthan said, "These are some of the social welfare activities our trust, Voice of Tenkasi, undertakes. We'll be going to see the site where the borewell is to be made. I usually go and see the site before I commit any funds.

"We have helped schools and temples with renovation, constructed toilets, organised tournaments for children like chess, kabaddi, silambam etc. Recently I was approached by a group of 50 students from an ST community. All of them were preparing for TNPSC and wanted help to purchase books. We contributed and also spoke to the bookstore. They were kind enough to give us a highly discounted rate.

"In the following days, we shall be sponsoring a group of children to take part in a tournament in Nepal. Good performance in the tournament would make them eligible for the Asian Games."

A short while later we reached the location where the borewell was to be made. It was near the village temple and surrounded by a vast open area.

Ananthan spoke to Karuppasamy, the BJP functionary, regarding the cost, the depth required to reach water and asked him about the funds raised for the purpose. He added that it would be very helpful during the temple festival. Satisfied, Ananthan promised to offer assistance.

"These may not be big things but they make a lot of difference to the community," said Ananthan, as we headed back to the car to proceed to our next stop, which was the chess tournament sponsored by Ananthan.

"How far is it from here", I asked Suman, Ananthan's relative, who was driving the car.

"We should be there in half an hour," he said.

Glancing at my phone for a list of questions that I was yet to put to Ananthan, I felt this probably was a good time to discuss semiconductors, a field in which he had over two decades of experience.

Not wanting to put the question straightaway, I decided to couch it within an observation that I had made after listening to the speeches he had made since morning.

"Why is it that you talk only about software in every speech and do not mention hardware or chip design, given your experience is in the latter," I ask.

Smiling at the question, Ananthan said, "That is because I cannot ask someone to become a neurologist before they become an MBBS.

"Chip design is a very complex process. You need many years of experience and learning to be able to design a chip well. To be a good chip designer, you need to have both hardware and software knowledge. It is very important to have a command over electronics. Software is more doable by anyone. You can get started with a computer science degree."

"Would you like to bring a fab to Tenkasi", I ask.

"Absolutely. See, chips have become the new oil. Even USA wants to reduce its dependence on Taiwan. That is why the US government had recently did a $60 billion grant through the CHIPS Act.

"You can't do anything without chips. I think you might recall how a huge number of cars were stuck due to the lack of chips.

"We can't do a lot of things on our own. For example, we can't build a defence supercomputer without imports, because we don't have our own chips.

"We are 1.4 billion people. Imagine the number of cellphones needed. We absolutely need to bring chip design and manufacturing to India. You can't grow as an economy if you keep producing lower value products. Think of the amount of rice you need to produce and sell in order to purchase a cellphone.

"Further, I would say, not just Tenkasi, you can bring a fab almost anywhere in Tamil Nadu. Cauvery delta or Ramanathapuram, there will be not be any difference. Water is not a very big issue. USA has set up its plants in the Arizona desert. What you need is continuous power supply, but more importantly the talent, a team of process engineers with high knowhow."

Do you have a roadmap as to what to kind of chips should we be starting off with?

"See, the capital expenditure required to set up a fab is very high unlike say a software company which can be started with a few computers.

"You would need 100-250 million dollars to start a simple fab of older nodes and in a span of three years, process nodes get outdated. So it would be better to start with mature technologies.

"We don't have to start with a 9nm, 7nm or a 3nm chip which Taiwan is trying now; those would require a capex of multi-billion dollar but we can start with 65nm. You don't need very sophisticated nodes to build chips for automotives, RFs etc. Plus these kind of chips would be useful for longer periods of time."

Do we have the people with the required skill set?

"My estimate is that we have a few thousand chip designers in India but hardly about 10 per cent of them would be highly experienced. And those engineers are highly expensive to hire, with salaries above Rs 1 crore per annum, which is what makes it difficult.

"The high barrier to entry in capex and talent is a challenge but I am an optimist and I am confident of we having a thriving semiconductor sector soon. PM Modi's government is making great efforts in this space, including the approximately 10 billion dollar SemiCon initiatives."

Could you tell me about the work you did in Intel?

"Sure. See for a chip design/CPU, there is a core and a un-core part. The un-core is quite crucial as it determines how the overall chip glues together and communicates with the other parts of the system. I was one of the few senior level architects involved in un-core and lead a large engineering team.

"I hold a number of patents, one of the most important being the CXL link, the interconnect to build large data centre systems for applications like AI/ML.

"If I continued to remain there, I would be earning 6 figure numbers. So you see how expensive it is to hire highly experienced chip designers."

Our discussion on chips ended here, as we had arrived at the venue of the chess tournament. The participants were eagerly waiting as the tournament had ended a while back.

Ananthan began his address by apologising to the audience for the delay in our arrival. "Tamil Nadu is the chess capital of India. It has produced the highest number of grandmasters in the country. But all of them have an urban background. We need to change that. I would also like to see the emergence of grandmasters from rural Tamil Nadu", he said as the audience cheered.

After the prize distribution, I spoke to Maharajeswaran, a 13-year-old who had secured the first prize to understand the scenario in Tenkasi vis à vis a city like Chennai.

"In Tenkasi, you do not have so many tournaments, while in Chennai, there is one happening almost every other day. Here you'll have a rated tournament, say, once in a month, while there the number is much higher. Plus you have a very good coaching infrastructure."

We then returned to Ananthan’s home, where two groups of political workers were waiting to speak to him.

The discussions went on for a couple of hours. Asked about the nature of discussions, Sankar ji said that these were regular occurrences and were an important means of getting a hang over local issues.

By the time the discussions were over, it was past 8 PM.

One Day Is Not Enough

“Sorry I could not give you much time this evening”, said Ananthan as the discussion ended.

"I know that you are here to do a day in my life but I suggest that you come back tomorrow. Its already late and you need to go back to the hotel in Rajapalayam.”

“Sure”, I said, knowing very well that we still had topics to cover but I wanted to ask him something that was on my mind before I left.

Why would a person like you who could have made over a million dollars per year leave the US and return to India to join politics?

“As I told you earlier, I grew up as a child of poverty, personally witnessed caste conflict and violence. That gave me the determination to dream for a better life. The path I found to that better life was through education, technology and entrepreneurship.

"Now I want to serve our district, our people, particularly those trapped in poverty, to bring hope. It is with that mission I left my wealthy life in America to come back. My one promise to the people of Tenkasi is that I will put their interest first and I want to see comprehensive development that lifts all our people up. I want to see Tenkasi prosperous and peaceful”.

He paused and continued, “To be honest, I never wanted to go to the US. I always wanted to stay in India, even though most of my batch in NIT Trichy had left for the US.

"But then life had something else in store for me. I initially worked with C-Dot in Bangalore and then joined a startup. The startup was later acquired by Intel. I had offers to go to the US from Intel and also other companies but I didn't want to go.

"Later, I decided to make the move for a short period, i.e., just for one year because we needed money to get my sister married.

"However, while I ended up staying for over two decades, I always continued to visit my village, purchase land here etc. After having gone through a difficult childhood, I wanted my father to feel that he is a 'land-owning farmer.'

"People used to laugh at me for buying land in the village as those were the days when people like us in the US, were buying land in the outskirts of Bangalore. To give you an idea, those were the days, when you could buy 2400 square feet in Marathahalli for Rs 6 lakh.

"But I was not interested in buying land in the city. As I said, I always wanted to give back to the village. I know of so many people, who studied with me, were more academically brilliant than me but could not come up because their circumstances did not allow them to. I wanted to help them also."

Day 2

On the second day, Ananthan was scheduled to visit the S Veerasamy Chettiar Engineering College in Puliyangudi, where the principal and the manangement had requested him to arrange an educational tour to the Zoho campus in Tenkasi.

We, however, started the discussion with agriculture as I wanted to get an idea of his vision for the constituency beyond tech.

Please tell me about the major crops and your plans for the agriculture sector.

“The agricultural land in the district can be divided broadly into Nanjai lands and Punjai lands. The Nanjai lands receive more rainfall and are located closer to the Western Ghats. The main crops there are paddy, sugarcane and banana.

“In the Punjai lands, which have less water, it is mostly millets and groundnut.

“Puliyangudi is famous for lemons and Sankarankovil is well known for its flowers. A lot of the vegetables and flowers are supplied to Kerala from Surandai area.

“However, agriculture has been loss making for the last 10 years. I have been writing a cheque for my brother every year to cover losses.

“I’ll give you an example. The Dharani Sugar mill closed down few years back and because of this, farmers have to take their produce to sugar mills in Sivaganga district. One-third of their revenue is gone in transport.

“There is no agro-industry in the district. We had a sugar mill but that has closed down, as I told you.

"We have rice mills, but we also need mills for processing millets.

"So much lemon is grown in Puliyangudi, but we don't have a cold storage.

"What we need is value addition. We would like to have a tomato processing unit. Lemon pickle making has to be encouraged to save our farmers from price fluctuations. In some seasons, lemon is available for Rs 30 a kilogram and in others the price goes up to Rs 300."

"While I keep talking about software, we also need a lot of ITI diploma people, who would be able to operate the machines in these processing units."

How do you plan to encourage entrepreneurship?

"I am trying to encourage micro entrepreneurs. Lemon pickle making and jasmine oil making are some of the possibilities as a cottage industry. 

"I also believe in the idea of cloud kitchens. Such a kitchen can be set up at a cost of approximately Rs 5 lakh. 

"Whom would the cloud kitchen supply to", I ask.

"Yes. For example, Biriyani is very popular here. These cloud kitchens could directly source from farmers, pay them a small premium and then supply to the shops.

"We could demand those kitchens to source organic produce and thus give a boost to organic farming."

On Improving Connectivity within the district and with rest of the country

"To bring all these high paying jobs, we need an airport in the district. At present we have to depend on the Madurai airport. 

"Within the district, we would like to have an electric train reaching every panchayat so that we can have a circular loop railway connecting all the major villages and agricultural centres to the markets.

"Flowers from Sankarankoil should be available in the markets of Surandai in say half an hour and with WiFi available in trains, you can continue working, while travelling.

"The idea is to connect all the major centres so that you can board a train, complete your work and shopping and return home.

"Sridhar Vembu ji (founder of Zoho) also recently posted about this on X. 

"We had presented the idea of electric train to Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and we heard of positive reception of the idea.

"The more the people travel, more the economic activity in the district picks up."

How was the reception to Kashi Tamil Sangamam in Tenkasi ? (Tenkasi means southern Kashi in Tamil)

"It was nice. People kept talking about the train journey as well as their stay for weeks after they returned.

"I too attended the Sangamam. It was a very good experience. People were very welcoming. It was reassuring to see that unity has remained in spite of so many efforts to divide us into North and South.

"What I liked the most was the effort of PM Modi to get all major Tamil literature translated into other languages."

By then, we reached the college. After a short discussion with the principal, Ananthan went round the college. He saw some of the labs. Going along with him, I asked him about what he thought was lacking in engineering colleges, especially the ones like the one we were in, i.e., in a rural setting.

"We need our engineering college students to be up to date with the latest technologies and opportunities. 

"In the computer lab, I saw students doing coding in the C language at a time when eighth graders in cities and the US are learning Python and developing mobile apps.

"My job is to act as an enabling hand. That is why I am helping to arrange such tours. It would be a comprehensive tour with Zoho engineers spending 3-4 hours with the students."

As we left the college, I asked him to tell me about his relationship with Sridhar Vembu and the experience of organising Startup Tenkasi.

"I am a devotee of him. Sridhar Vembu ji is my Guru, philosopher, mentor and great pillar of motivation. His presence in Tenkasi is a divine blessing for the entire region. When I was contemplating of my relocation, the only person I wanted to meet and ask for guidance was him. After the meeting, I walked with lot of conviction of the purpose.

“We speak regularly and discuss often about bringing hitech jobs to Tenkasi. He has a vision to bring manufacturing here in a big way.

"Manufacturing of a number of things. We would like to see manufacturing of electric vehicles, medical equipment, appliances, toys, etc for example. Sridhar ji would often mention about we being in the trap of “Costly input and commodity output”. We want to avoid that. We want to go up the value chain. For example, we would like to see the beedi-worker women of Tenkasi to be rather winding the coils of motors than winding beedi leaves.

"We also discuss about the importance of technological independence. What are we going to do if Meta stops storing our data and says we don't want to operate WhatsApp in India?

"Please ask Sridhar Vembu ji to improve 'Arattai', (a WhatsApp like messaging app developed by Zoho), I said, recalling that I had installed it in my phone but not used it. 

"Yes, Arattai and apps like the Ula browser. We often discuss Atmanirbharta in technology, the need for us to have more data centres etc.

"Startup Tenkasi was set up with a vision to make startups as a movement. Sridhar ji would often mention to me about the book “How Asia Works” and we would love to make Tenkasi like Estonia by 2032. I always admire Estonia. Its a small country but has done very well to have a wonderful economy with tech, startups, data centres, etc.

"We had over 200 entries from 111 colleges, including the top IITs. The pitches were world class. The idea was to keep the focus on rural-solution oriented startups. We had a tough time shortlisting the 20 finalists and picking the winner.

"We are still in touch with some of the participants and are looking forward to setting up a Startup Clinic, which would be like a community, where we could help each other."

We then stopped for lunch, where we were joined by Vinod, an entrepreneur from Rajapalayam. Ananthan briefly discussed about manufacturing and machines/gears to support India’s Swachh Bharat mission.

After the meal, it was time to say goodbye to Ananthan, as he had to leave for Sankarankovil for his next engagement and I had to go back to Rajapalayam.

"It was nice having you here," said Ananthan, as I took his leave and made my way to Vinod's car. He had very kindly offered to drop me at the hotel in Rajapalayam.

Thanking Ananthan for giving me his valuable time and a comprehensive idea of his vision for the constituency, I returned after what was a enlightening stay in a majorly rural district in southern Tamil Nadu, over 600 kilometres from the hustle and bustle of south Chennai, where I had spent a day with BJP state secretary SG Suryah, just over a month ago.

This ground report is part of the 'A Politician's Workday' series in which Swarajya correspondents spend a day or two with political activists and leaders to understand their daily work. Please let us know whom you would want us to meet next.

Also Read: A Politician's Workday: Hitting The Road With BJP's SG Suryah