For decades, India’s semiconductor industry resembled an architect designing villas for others while living in a rented flat. The country’s semiconductor engineers, who constitute approximately 20 percent (a widely accepted industry estimate) of the global chip-design workforce, have long generated intellectual property for foreign titans while India remained dependent on imports for its own consumption.

A new generation of chip design startups is now on the rise and their commercial trajectories, like that of Mindgrove Technologies, suggest the tenants are finally building their own estate. Sticking with Mindgrove for this piece, by securing high-volume integrations with local manufacturers, the IIT Madras-incubated venture is fast moving from lab to market.

Mindgrove has just announced a memorandum of understanding with Prama India, a leading domestic surveillance company, marking a transition from laboratory validation to real-world volume. Prama will integrate Mindgrove’s Vision SoC — a GHz-class processor funded under the government’s Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme — across its commercial security product line, according to a press release.

This represents an instance of an Indian fabless startup successfully navigating the “valley of death” between a prototype and a mass-market production line, targeting a segment where reliability and security are paramount. Fingers crossed that there will be more and in greater frequency.

Note for example, HrdWyr, backed by Ideaspring Capital, will soon ship a processor that domestic consumer electronics company boAt has already signed on to buy as an anchor customer.

India’s semiconductor startups are attempting to carve out a space for themselves in a global market that is projected to exceed $1.3 trillion this year, even as the industry fragments along geopolitical fault lines. Note the latest memory chip shortage and its repercussions.

 As a “Silicon Curtain” of export controls and supply-chain de-risking descends between Western powers and Chinese manufacturing hubs, major economies are racing to secure “trusted” digital infrastructure. India is positioning itself as a resilient third pole in this realignment, tapping the open-source RISC-V architecture to build sovereign hardware that is immune to unilateral licensing restrictions.

“For Indian fabless semiconductor companies, credibility is built when products leave the lab and enter sustained deployment. This engagement validates our Vision SoC as a production-ready platform capable of meeting performance, reliability, and scale requirements in real-world security systems,” Shashwath TR, Mindgrove’s co-founder and CEO said in the press release.

Mindgrove’s deal with Prama follows its commercial partnership with Pinetics, which focuses on integrating Mindgrove’s SoCs into a broader range of commercial applications, including biometric access control systems, smart locks, and camera solutions. By extending the now production-ready Secure IoT chip into specific modules and products, the collaboration aims to create a more complete, domestic electronics stack.

In 2025 Mindgrove also teamed up with Bosch Global Software Technologies (BGSW) in an agreement that saw the startup supplying chips and boards for field testing in automotive and industrial environments, winning a stamp of approval from a global heavyweight. This collaboration allowed Mindgrove to refine its software stack and prove its silicon’s reliability under the stringent safety standards of industrial automation.

“Our collaboration with  Mindgrove marks an important milestone in advancing indigenous semiconductor capabilities for next generation video security solutions,” Ashish P Dhakan, Managing Director and CEO, Prama India, said in the press release. “By combining Mindgrove’s semiconductor design expertise with Prama’s extensive experience in video security, product engineering, compliance, and large-scale deployments, we aim to develop world-class solutions that are secure, scalable, and globally competitive.”

Beyond technology development, this collaboration will help build strategic capabilities within India’s semiconductor ecosystem, foster innovation, strengthen supply-chain resilience, and support the Government of India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat vision in critical technology sectors, Dhakan notes.

This all could mean accelerated commercialisation for Mindgrove’s chips — it has two platforms currently, one for Secure IoT, and the other, the Vision SoC — and encouragement for the chip design company to lean into its product development plans. For India, this is another small, but important step forward in building a local semiconductor product ecosystem.

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Gokul, his fellow-founder Nikhil Ramaswamy and their 85-member team have put in some five years of R&D into this stack, which they see as a precursor to a general purpose “manipulation OS” for robots.

In this view point, Gokul talks about today’s challenges that large manufacturers face, with the example of the auto sector, in an age of rapidly shifting consumer tastes. Robots that could quickly switch from one type of task to another could hold the key to genuine personalised product customisation in cars and the gadgets that go into them and therefore serve as a source of market expansion for the OEMs Gokul argues.

Such robots could also help make factories and manufacturing significantly more sustainable by advancing material recycling —what if your new car could come from your old car or your new phone from your old phone, he asks.

Today that recycling is very costly and therefore not attractive, but a robot that automates the effort could change the landscape, he says. In this scenario, it would also be possible to go from centralised, gargantuan Giga-factories to hyper-local “micro-factories” that offer personalisation plus sustainability.

Gokul, his fellow founder Nikhil Ramaswamy, and their team at CynLr, have recently released what he described as an Object Intelligence Stack. The technology aims to mimic the curiosity and adaptability of a human infant, allowing robots to manipulate unfamiliar items without specific prior training.

By collaborating with the Centre for Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Science, CynLr is translating brain-function research into a sophisticated software and sensor framework. Their long-term vision involves creating a manipulation operating system and an “object store” and a “task store” to transform flexible manufacturing, just as the App Store transformed the smartphone.

Currently, they are deploying these solutions in the automotive and semiconductor industries to automate some complex manual assembly processes. You can catch the full conversation on Friday, March 6 right here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a one-minute preview with Gokul envisioning a future “manipulation OS” for robots of which the object intelligence stack is the precursor.

Gokul, his fellow founder Nikhil Ramaswamy, and their team at CynLr, have recently released what he described as an Object Intelligence Stack. The technology aims to mimic the curiosity and adaptability of a human infant, allowing robots to manipulate unfamiliar items without specific prior training.

By collaborating with the Centre for Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Science, CynLr is translating brain-function research into a sophisticated software and sensor framework. Their long-term vision involves creating a manipulation operating system and an “object store” and a “task store” to transform flexible manufacturing, just as the App Store transformed the smartphone.

Currently, they are deploying these solutions in the automotive and semiconductor industries to automate some complex manual assembly processes. You can catch the full conversation on Friday, March 6 right here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a 90-second preview with Gokul giving a brief description of the object intelligence stack.

Watch on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/shorts/K5dDFCnWQ3E

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In a recent episode of Conversations at India Tech Report, Jay Panchal, founder and CEO at Aule Space spoke about his young space-tech startup’s vision to help build India’s robot workforce in space.

Aule is starting on that journey with the aim of launching a fleet of “jetpacks” that will work as mission extension vehicles for geostationary satellites and offer other applications in the defense sector as well. You can find the full conversation at indiatechreport.in or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a quick point, with Jay talking about how he and his co-founders bring complementary skills to the table, their current team and immediate hiring needs – focused on core engineering.

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In a recent episode of Conversations at India Tech Report, Jay Panchal, founder and CEO at Aule Space spoke about his young space-tech startup’s vision to help build India’s robot workforce in space.

Aule is starting on that journey with the aim of launching a fleet of “jetpacks” that will work as mission extension vehicles for geostationary satellites and offer other applications in the defense sector as well.

This a quick chapter on some of Jay’s important formative experiences that set him on the path to entrepreneurship in the space economy.

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In a recent episode of Conversations at India Tech Report, Sunil Cavale at Speciale Invest and Vishal Katariya from Ankur Capital discussed their report on the Semiconductor Startup Landscape in India, which was released last month. The two deep-tech VC investors outlined some of the top trends they see developing “on the ground”.

They also spoke about what gave them a sense of optimism about this sector’s growth in India, including the personas of the founders of emerging startups, the deal flows and origination of capital and developments such as entrepreneurs seeking to go beyond fabless chip design into manufacturing in India for India and from India for the world. Here are my top five takeaways from the conversation.

1. Funding maturation signals investor confidence

India’s semiconductor startups are graduating faster through funding stages. Multiple companies — including Mindgrove, Netrasemi, and Morphing Machines — raised Series A rounds within 18 months of their seed funding. These rounds are two to three times larger than previous raises; Netrasemi’s was about 10 times bigger.

The speed and scale reflect technical validation and market traction. Zoho, a software company, led Netrasemi’s recent round, signalling that non-traditional investors now see merit in the sector. Around $100 million has flowed to chip product startups in India over the past three years or so, mostly from domestic funds including Speciale Invest, Ankur Capital, Peak XV Partners and others.

Growth capital remains limited compared with global standards, but the trajectory suggests that larger rounds will follow as products reach customers.

2. India’s semicon ambitions expand beyond chip design

Entrepreneurs are now building for the manufacturing side, not just fabless design. Startups are developing quality-inspection tools, lithography equipment, process innovations, and low-volume prototyping capabilities. This shift responds to government investment in fabrication and packaging infrastructure.

The ecosystem is moving towards full-stack semiconductor capability — design, manufacturing, and packaging — rather than remaining concentrated in design services. Founders recognise that India’s semiconductor mission allocates substantial capital to manufacturing, creating a domestic market for ancillary technologies. This diversification reduces dependence on global supply chains and addresses geopolitical risks.

3. Talent pool deepens with second-time founders, researchers turning entrepreneurs

Industry experts widely believe India holds 20 per cent of global semiconductor design talent, much of it in services roles. A growing cohort has worked in multinational companies — Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Intel — then spent years in Silicon Valley or Europe before returning to start-up semiconductor product companies in India.

These founders bring experience beyond design: sales, business development, application engineering, and management. They understand how ecosystems function elsewhere and can build well-rounded teams. Four founder profiles dominate: academics commercialising decades of research, returnees from multinationals, second-time entrepreneurs, and recent graduates who studied abroad. Government schemes and policy support have incentivised these founders.

4. Product diversity spans edge computing to compound semiconductors

Startups are building chips for edge applications — IoT devices, cameras, smart meters — addressing high-volume, lower-value markets in India. Others focus on communication and radio-frequency products for 5G, 6G, radar, and defence.

Compound semiconductor activity is emerging in gallium nitride and silicon carbide, led by teams from top institutions including IIT Bombay and IISc in Bangalore. Photonics startups are developing networking and interconnect technologies. Some companies target data-centre compute, while others integrate artificial intelligence into edge devices.

Products vary in complexity, cost, and timescale: consumer electronics may reach market within two years, while high-performance computing or photonics chips need three to four years.

5. Geopolitical and capital constraints remain substantial

Taiwan dominates chip fabrication. ASML in the Netherlands controls the high-end lithography equipment. Geopolitical instability poses risks that affect all startups, not just Indian ones. Talent costs are high. Semiconductor engineers command premium salaries globally and in India.

Startups often cannot afford top-tier multinational employees on current funding. Markets move quickly, creating product-fit risks. While acquisitions such as Kinara (bought by NXP for $300 million) demonstrate exit potential, Indian startups have not yet raised the hundreds of millions that global peers routinely secure.

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