Start-up lands industry vet as president. (People).

EVEN though it was available to him, Ashok Dhawan never used the corporate jet when he worked as division president at Lucent Technologies.

So now that he's at a much smaller company, the adjustment isn't all that difficult, he laughed. Dhawan, the new president and chief executive of high-speed electronic components firm Inphi Corp., hasn't always been in the high-end corporate world.

"In '96 three of us started a company and we worked in a building that had no heating," he said. Dhawan has spent 25 years in the networking technology field and has held engineering and marketing positions at companies such as Raycom Corp., which were eventually purchased by larger firms.

Founded in 2000, Westlake Village-based Inphi employs 40 people who develop high-speed telecommunications and data circuits. Dhawan said he would help Inphi shift its focus from technology to customers.

"They have been doing a lot of good work, but the company has been focused on technology and it has to be developed into more of a business," he said. "We have the technology, but nobody knows about us."

He said he would help the company develop partnerships so it can expand its reach. "We're a component supplier, so we have relationships with companies that do end-user systems, and we need to help them design the best systems possible."

Inphi, a privately held company controlled by three venture capital firms, is trying to carve out a bigger portion of the market, he said.

"There are very few companies that offer what we do as far as our specific product line, so we don't have that much competition," he said.

But the market--which includes telecommunications, data communications and instrumentation systems industries--is tight, Dhawan said.

"We think that as growth comes back, especially in telecommunications, we can be a strong player," he said.

Dhawan lives in Westlake Village with his wife Shirani. They have two children.