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Former Dingwall Academy pupil makes good in United States as Indie Semiconductor finds profitable niche in market as our relationship with cars changes gear





Donald McClymont
Donald McClymont

Swapping Caledonia for California has paid off for Dingwall man Donald McClymont.

The company he co-founded, Indie Semiconductor, is on the US Nasdaq stock market with a turnover of millions of dollars and is playing an important role in helping the auto industry transition into a new era of self-driving, electric power vehicles which will transform our relationship with our cars.

The former Dingwall Academy pupil studied electronics at Glasgow University before going on to work for Scottish microelectronics company Wolfson, where he began his semi-conductor career as a designer.

By the time he moved to the US, he had moved on to the sales and marketing side of the industry.

He joined new business Axiom Microdevices, co-founded by Ichiro Aoki, Scott Kee and David Kang, who with Donald would go on to found Indie Semiconductor.

Indie Semiconductor was soon able to carve out a unique niche for itself in the automotive industry at a time when the demands of car makers and their customers were changing.

He said: “We are now, in the world, the only solely focussed automotive semiconductor company.We make a lot of electronic chips for various functions in the car, and we decided to enter this sector at the same time the consumer decided they wanted something more like a cell phone or iPad as opposed to mechanical gauges and switches. That created a lot of opportunity for us.”

The introduction of new safety standards in areas such as emergency safety braking and blind-spot detection have also created new opportunities for the firm.

“That adds massively to the electronics contents and that’s where we are focussing our business today,” Donald explained.

“Generally speaking, our products go on higher end cars like the BMW 3-series and above, and electric vehicles are kind of synonymous with higher end vehicles so anything that is good for EVs is good for us. That’s one of the big megatrends for us – electric vehicles, along with autonomous driving.”

The firm has a design centre in Edinburgh. He said: “I would love to have something in the Highlands as well, but sadly there’s not much of the right kind of engineering expertise.”

He sees the country as a great place to do business but admits to frustration with the impact of Brexit, making it harder to recruit overseas staff, even if they have graduated from Scottish universities.

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