Ittiam Systems, the Bangalore-based digital signal processing (DSP) systems company announced commencement of its operations here on Wednesday. The company has got $5 million seed capital from Global Technology Vecture.

Ittiam has been set up by a team of seven senior professionals from the Texas Instruments, who together have vast experience in VLSI (very large systems integration) and DSP industry.

Ittiam’s prime focus is on DSP software and systems space, a $9 billion market space which is growing annually at 50 per cent, said the company’s chairman and CEO, Mr Srini Rajam at a press meet.

DSP systems fuelled by the ever-increasing need for higher bandwidth, mobility and convergence is one of the fastest growing segments. It forms the core of several devices like mobile phones, digital modems, MP3 players, digital cameras and palm tops, said Mr Rajam.

Besides custom developing products, it will also develop ready to use products that will be licensed to customers. Ittiam will go beyond software to algorithm and reference broad which resides in an end equipment.

The domain areas that it will focus on are wireless, wireline, audio and speech and imaging and video. Product development activities are underway in all these domain areas, said Mr Rajam.

Ittiam hopes to earn around $40 million by 2005. The 50 man company will grow to 100 by the end of this year.

Mr Rajam said ” Ittiam in fact represents a short form of a famous Rene Descartes (the 16th century philosopher) quote – I think therefore I am.”

Ittiam is likely to raise around $5 million in the second round of funding which will happen in the next six to eight months, said Mr Rajam.