This is the right time to enter the Indian semiconductor ecosystem: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The third futureDESIGN Roadshow under SemiconIndia Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme was held in IIT Delhi, India. SemiconIndia futureDESIGN Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme comes with provisions to strengthen the semiconductor chip design ecosystem in the country.

Talking about the opportunities for futureDESIGN start-ups in automotive, mobility and compute sectors, Hidetoshi Shibata, President and CEO, Renesas Electronics said that we need to develop much faster time to market, especially for the automotive sector.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Hon'ble Minister of State for Electronics & IT, and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Government of India was the Chief Guest. There was participation from the futureDESIGN Start-ups, global semiconductors majors, deep-tech VCs, etc., to catalyze the next-generation semiconductor start-ups in the country.

Chandrasekhar said this is the right time to enter the Indian semiconductor ecosystem. We have a large number of semiconductor startups now in India. India will definitely come across several challenges. We are trying to overcome them. He suggested an introduction with Hardeep Puri.

He presented awards to two future design startups -- Dr. Ranjani Narain, CTO, Morphing Machines, a fabless semicon company, and Jyothis Indirabhai, CEO, Netrasemi, for chip making. They propose to develop AI smart vision applications.

In his talk, Mohit Bhatnagar, MD & Partner, Sequoia Capital India, believes this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Indian semiconductor industry. This is an inflection point for the industry. About 20% of design engineers are residing in India. There were over 27 startups on the the stage.

Anandamoy Roychowdhary, Sequoia said that we made semiconductor investment. We are building trailing-edge processors, along with the Shakti processor. SHAKTI is an open-source initiative by the Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering group at IIT Madras to develop the first indigenous Indian industrial-grade processor. Sometime soon, we will be able to build a GPU out of India.

We also have InCore Semiconductors in RISC-V. He added that we need more custom silicon. InCor provides base capability to build faster, better, silicon. At InCore, the vision is to be a global leader in processor design and innovation, empowering customers with ground-breaking RISC-V-based solutions.

There was an MoU of ANSYS with ChipIN Centre at C-DAC. Rafiq Somani, AVP, Ansys India and Dr. SD Sudarshan, ED, C-DAC Bangalore, signed the MoU to provide framework for chip design using EDA tools.

EdgeQ a unique blend

At the ChipIn talk, Hariprasad Gangadharan, India Country Head, EdgeQ, noted that EdgeQ is a unique blend of 5G along with chips and software experts. We are now disrupt meaningfully, with 6:1 integration of connectivity and compute. We have a hybrid architecture. EdgeQ silicon scales across small cells and macro cells.

Krishna Rangasayee, CEO, SiMa.ai, said that we started the company about four years ago. We have developed the ML SoC platform. MLSoC platform is purpose-built to let you effortlessly scale and deploy ML at the embedded edge. We support your entire computer vision app. We are focused into the embedded edge market. It covers smart vision, robotics and Industry 4.0, industrial drones, healthcare, smart agriculture, ADAS, etc. We are a software company building our own silicon. We are now creating an iconic company. He thanked the Government of India for providing the Make in India opportunity.

Start-ups in Indian ecosystem

There was a panel discussion on vertically integrating FutureDesign DLI start-ups in Indian ecosystem. The participants were Hitesh Garg, India Country Manager, NXP Semiconductors, and Rajen Vagadia VP and President, Qualcomm, with futureDESIGN DLI start-ups -- Deepak Shapeti, CEO, Morphing Machines, and Jyothis Indirabhai, CEO, Netrasemi.

Deepak Shapeti, Morphing Machines, said that this is indeed the right time to enter the semiconductor industry. Jyothis Indirabhai, CEO, Netrasemi was humbled to be present. We are now developing a startup. We were not expecting support from government. Now, there are lots of opportunities for semiconductor engineers. Netrasemi is building AI/ML chipsets.

Hitesh Garg, NXP, said we are talking about the startup ecosystem. There are over 100,000 engineers doing innovative work. We are mentoring about 25 companies in the electronics and semiconductor industry. There are also some healthcare companies.

Rajen Vagadia VP and President, Qualcomm, said they had shortlisted a few companies to incubate and support them. It was a massive success for Qualcomm. We have so far incubated 125+ startups over the last eight years. Today, we are seeing a beautiful time, when everyone is now aligned. We are also now in the third year for women entrepreneurs. We are also working with startups.

Shapeti said they had a difficult journey initially. There has been concerted push since then, and it has been all about ups! The Indian government is now fully supporting us. Indirabhai said the onus is on us to make this happen. The government is also taking risks for chip building in India. This is a great opportunity for India in semiconductors. We have faced challenges in the past. We are going forward with our work. Skill development is another major angle to look at. He advised people to carefully choose bootstrapping. Garg, NXP, added that solutions now have to be very simple.

There was another panel discussion on attracting investment from VC industry for semiconductor start-ups. The participants were Anandamoy Roychowdhary, Surge Partner, Sequoia Southeast Asia, Sudipto Sannigrahi, Principal, Matrix Partners, Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest, Suryaprakash Konanuru, CTO, Ideaspring Capital, and Ganapathy Subramaniam, Partner, Celesta Capital.