FNConnect - Ram Dey from Covnetics - Episode 4

We're delighted to be joined by Ram Dey from Covnetics, a UK-based FPGA Design
 Services Provider and FNConnect member.

Ram Dey, CEO of Covnetics, speaks with Amaia Mildon, FNConnect founder, for a discussion about networking and the power of connections when it comes to business opportunities. 

Covnetics and Frazer-Nash Consultancy recently entered into industry collaboration to combine expertise to improve the safety and reliability of the UK’s most important digital systems. Read more.

Are you interested in joining FNConnect? It's free to do so and you can find out more here: https://kbr.foleon.com/frazer-nash/fnconnect/.

FNConnect is coming to Central London for the first time on 2nd July 2026, bringing together SMEs, corporate leaders, and energy specialists for an engaging evening to discuss one of the major topics facing all sectors today, energy resilience. This event will explore energy resilience including the benefits of building energy systems which can withstands disruption, adapt to change, whilst continuing to provide reliable and sustainable energy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the FN Connect Conversations Podcast, delivered to you by Fraser Nash Consultancy. FN Connect is our small business network connecting people across industries and capabilities, enabling growth and opportunities. This podcast highlights some of the amazing businesses in our FN Connect network. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Ram Day, Chief Executive of Covenetics Limited, a specialist FPGA design services company. Ram, thank you so much for joining us today. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and the business you lead?

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Of course. So my name is Ram Day, and I'm the chief executive of a small business called Kovnetics Limited. We're a design services organization specializing in microchips called FPGAs. It's a small business running 15 years now, so quite established. And we have a number of customers from tier one customers all the way down to small SMEs, and they're the kind of customer base that we support.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Thank you, Ram, for that introduction. I wanted to start by asking about networking since that's such a big part of F Connect. It's obviously important for building those relationships, but it can be daunting for some. What would you say is your best networking tip?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

From my point of view as a director, I do quite a lot of networking at shows and events. So networking is very important. But the key thing is not to think of networking as going in and saying, right, well, I want to network with this person because I want their business because I want to sell them something or I want them to buy something from me. It's just to go in and establish a relationship, really. So we're quite happy to go in and tell them about our business and then just see how the conversation takes you as opposed to trying to sell something. Because that puts people off. If people come to me and they're automatically talking about what they can do for me, I'm kind of thinking, actually, I just want to find out a bit about your business. Maybe even a bit about yourself. Relationships build up, take time, as we all do in our normal lives. It takes time and you have to build trust. That's the key thing. It's building trust, having integrity and building trust. And that's exactly the same in business. It takes time to build the trust for another organization to maybe collaborate with you, work with you, sell you something or buy something from you. So I think it's building the relationship, but not having foremost in your mind, oh, I need to sell my thing to this organization. So that's what I would say.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

That's such an important point about trust and taking the time to build genuine relationships. And it's wonderful that in-person events have returned after the challenges of the pandemic. What would you say is your favorite part of networking?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, I mean, you're right about the COVID era in everything, as we know. And I think it's a shame about how when we came out of COVID and people started to do meetings again and networking in person, we see this quite a lot in the events that we go to. They lay the events on, but they automatically record everything and let you join online for webinars. So these events that we used to go to before COVID, and there was 50 to 100 people, and now we go to them and there's 30 to 50 people, but there's 50 people online. So they're listening to the seminars, but the networking opportunities that happen in between, if let's say you go to a show or an event, they're not there with all the people who are online, and vice versa, they're not networking with you because they're just listening to the various seminars. So from my point of view, it's a bit of a shame really that we don't have more people in person. I want to be there in person. From my point of view, obviously, my calendar has to chalk out a number of days to eventing. I will always go in person. I won't really join an event just to listen to the seminars. We can listen to them afterwards. They're always recorded. So it's better to go in person, make the relationship as we talked about, or even just, you know, to touch base with people you've met over the years. And the key thing about networking is it soon becomes a web. So if I network with somebody, it might not be that I'm ever going to do business with that person, but that person knows somebody else, and they say, Oh yes, actually, Ram's business does this. You guys want this, and they just put it together. And that has happened. The people that we know quite well are not people who would give us any kind of business, but they've known somebody else and they've referred us. And that's, you know, the contact that happens that really demonstrates how important human interaction is.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, the internet can connect us to an extent, but the engagement levels and just that personal interaction trumps it every time, I think. Next, could you share a story of a key connection from networking that has helped you or your business?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's not so much my career, but it's kind of the business taking the business forward. So from our point of view, obviously we look out uh for what comes out in tenders from organizations. You know, we want this doing. And we did see a tender come out of an organization in the Northwests, and it said, here's a tender, we want this work doing, the kind of work we do. So we thought, excellent. But they said, actually, what we want is we want your engineers to come and work on our site in Manchester. Now, as a business, we don't actually provide that service. We don't want to take our engineers and put them on a site elsewhere for a year or six months or two years. We work off our own site. So we effectively looked at the proposal and said, actually, we can't engage in that. So we left it. And then there was just a simple breakfast meeting at the University of Manchester. I attended the breakfast meeting, sorry about half an hour, but it was at a science park. Went there, saw one of the professors who was part of this tender, and he said, Ran, you guys do this kind of work. How come we've not engaged? I said, Because it says we've got to put people on your site and we just don't do that. And he says, forget that. We haven't got time, we haven't got people, we haven't got the skill set. So he said, if you guys want to do that, then put yourself forward for it. And we did, and we got that contract, and that was 2016. And we have now been working on and off on that contract for nine or ten years. Two of the guys are coming up to their fourth year continuously, and that just happened on a chance meeting, a breakfast meeting, which only lasts half an hour. And I probably just bumped into him and that was it. And he said, What do you do? I didn't really know him through the tender proposal because he kind of sat behind it. We just had this conversation. What do you do? Oh, I do this. And what do you do? Oh, I work for this organization and we've brought a proposal out. Why didn't you engage? So again, that comes back to what we were saying earlier: engagement person to person. You just don't know what might come out of these face-to-face meetings. So, yeah, that one was quite good because that project's been going nine years and it will probably last for another three or four years. So it's been very good for covenetics. And it's in space, and the engineers all love space and satellite stuff. So the guys who are working on it absolutely love working in that area. We all like looking at space, and that's exactly what this project does. So, yeah, from my point of view, that was a key project that came out of a chance meeting.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

What a brilliant example of how those connections can develop over time. Right place, right time. You never know when you might bump into someone. Next, what advice would you give to someone just starting their career in the industry?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah, I mean, I'd probably speak more broadly to electronics. Obviously, we're in a very specialized chip area, but you won't come out of university and be able to do our job. The analogy is medicine. You do your seven years degree in medicine and you come out, you can't do brain surgery yet, you have to specialise. You do a four-year electronics degree, you come out, you've got a lot of skills, but you can't do chip design yet, you've got to specialise. So it's very similar. So I would say generally in electronics, for people just starting out, graduating with bachelor's or master's degrees, the key thing is interest, really. One of the things that we sell ourselves on as an organization is are you interested in the work? Because if you're not interested in designing things for different industries, then no amount of salary, you're going to get bored with it. So it's having the interest. And the graduates that come out, yes, the salary will come. And the other things that younger people may be interested in, but you've got to get yourself on the ladder of being interested in things. So some of the engineers that we've taken on from a younger age, we can tell that they're really infused by electronics or space or whatever it is, you know, the kind of things that we do. Electronics, that's what we do. We're always under the hood. If it's a phone, we're inside the phone. If it's a network, we're inside the network. That's what we do. We make the things tick. So if you're interested in making things tick, then you will be doing the work. So I think in any industry, really, it's to chase first the thing that you're interested in, as opposed to maybe chasing the salaries. Because it soon becomes true that money is a very short, motivator going to work and being interested in what you do, that's a long time. So I think it's the au cliche, chase your dreams. If you're interested in doing it, just have a go at doing it. Take a slight risk. We're a bit of a risk-averse society, but take a slight risk and follow that. And you could do it when you're young, that's what we're talking about. Starting out, it's not a problem if a year or two down the line it doesn't work out, but at least you took the risk. And finding out, it gets a bit harder when you get older and entrenched.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

That's such an important point about following your interests rather than chasing salaries. I think about the rush coming out of school and onto the next thing. You're always on this conveyor belt. And then as soon as you get to work, you're still stuck in that mindset. Building that foundation and having patience seems key. Don't chase the salary just yet. If you can do it and you have that solid foundation, then you can start increasing.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, it will come, depending on the industry you're in. I mean, to the point about not rushing, society has evolved and changed. We're in another phase now with the internet and mobile phones. And that phase has sped everything up. Instant gratification, instant response, instant answers. That's what search engines give us now. They give us instant answers. AI making it even more instant. So if people get used to that, it means that they want a quicker turnaround of whatever they're doing. So they want a quicker promotion, they want quicker responsibility, they want quicker answers. That kind of societal change is slightly the downside sometimes on things like the internet and AI. Obviously, I've lived through pre-all that as well. And it gives us lots of positives. It's not to knock the positives, but just to take a step back and say, right, actually, this is going to be hard work for the next period of time, but I'm really interested in it, so I will chase it.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Speaking of chasing your interest, you mentioned space opportunities earlier. So people early in their careers looking ahead, is there a growing market in the space sector for engineers with FPGA skills?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

It's definitely, definitely the case. Over a 35-year period, you see industries come and go. But space and satellites, if we talk about things put into space, it's definitely taking off and it is on a ramp up. And that's across the UK. It's definitely on the up. And that covers the FPGA, which is the microchips we do, but the electronics as well and the software. So it needs the whole of that engineering capacity to make this industry go. And obviously, we'll get our own spaceports and that will help. I remember one of the few seminars that we've been to where they say, yeah, do we hold our UK generation back by being risk averse with not being entrepreneurial or taking risks? They'll put a lot of rockets up and they will blow up a lot of rockets too. And that costs a lot of money. We've seen Elon Musk go through it. It costs a lot of money, but it takes a lot of risks. And at the end, it's a step change. We don't tend to do that here, but that's how you get satellites in space. That's how you'll get manned satellites and return rockets. So space is definitely going up, and we do need a lot more engineers that can apply themselves to that kind of sector. And from a telecoms background, I did telecoms for 20 years. That's kind of gone downhill a lot over the last 20 or 30 years. It's ramped down a bit. Uh we apply it into other areas now. So there's a lot of telecommunications in space. But yeah, space industries, automotive industries, defence industries, they're all on the increase within the UK. So they need the backfill of engineering capacity into that area. And the other key thing is people said to us, why don't you go higher abroad? For certain industries, like defence, satellite, aerospace, they tend to be UK eyes only. So we won't outsource or offshore just because of where those industries are. So therefore we need it in the UK. It goes back to building the resources and the skill set through universities. And probably it's not really universities, it's going all the way back to primary schools and it's grassroots. You've got to start it down at the primary, secondary school area, get people just interested in science. It's not engineering then, it's just science. It is a traditional STEM subject.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

That's really interesting, particularly the point about grassroots STEM education. Thinking more broadly, what industry trend do you think isn't getting enough attention at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah, I mean, uh obviously is one key one that we just talked about. Space, defense, whether you like it or not, depending on your ethical tastes, is a growing industry. But then there's the newer industries that we talk about, AI, quantum computing, the industries that are growing now. I mean, AI is out of the box now. We can't put it back in. It was like the internet. I remember the World Wide Web was out of the box before we started to put all the regulations in place. And AI has gone the same way. It's come very fast. It's been talked about for a long time. It's not that it just appeared a few years ago, it was there for a long time, but step changes have made it appear. So that's one of the areas that actually requires a lot of skill sets in different areas, different parts of it. So I'm obviously talking from the electronics and the chip design. But just to think about the systems, the software, other areas that will help AI move forward, that all needs doing. And again, nobody can turn around and say, oh yeah, I'm a 10, 15 year expert in AI, because it's just not been around that long. So everyone's learning at the same time and very quickly, but we have to be careful with it. It's probably not going to replace my job tomorrow as an FPGA designer because it's application and problem solving. And the underlying thing is it can support and supplement our industry, but it's probably not going to replace that kind of industry. But that area, AI, and then what sits behind it, quantum computing, when quantum computing becomes more mainstream and they've got AI and quantum computing together, it will take things in big, big strides. I suspect when they join that together and you've got quantum computing underlying the engines that are running the AI, lots of things will get solved. And lots of other problems will happen.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Ram, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today. It's been fascinating to hear about your journey and the opportunities in the FPDA and space sectors.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

No problem. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

In today's episode of F and Connect Conversations, we spoke with Ram Day, Chief Executive of Covenetics Limited. Covenetics is a specialist FPGA design services company based in the UK. Ram is just one of the many innovative business leaders who are part of our FN Connect network. To learn more about Finet and how you can join our network, visit the Fraser Nash Consultancy website. Today's episode was created using AI technology from a company called Allowed Ball. The content was based on a real interview and was regenerated, edited, and produced with the help of AI technology. Thank you for listening to F Connect Conversations. We look forward to bringing you more stories from our network soon.