Chennai Startup Mindgrove Launches India's 1st Commercial System on Chip (SoC)

Chennai headquartered Mindgrove Technologies, a semiconductor startup backed by Peak XV Partners, has introduced Secure IoT, India's first commercial System on Chip (SoC) designed specifically for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Named as Secure IoT, this high-performance SoC is tailored for controlling applications on a wide range of connected smart devices. It offers programmability, flexibility, security, and superior computing power. Notably, it operates at a clock speed of 700 MHz.

Secure IoT is expected to be priced approximately 30% lower than other chips in similar segments. By using this chip, local Indian companies can reduce the cost of their devices without compromising on high-end features.

Under its applications, the SoC can control various devices, including wearables like smartwatches, smart city devices (such as connected electricity, water, and gas meters), connected home devices (like smart locks, fans, and speakers), as well as electric vehicle (EV) battery management systems and control systems.

The company said it is the only Indian chip that is commercially available in this segment. Mindgrove is now looking for all Indian OEMs and ODMs who might be interested.

Availability: The chip has successfully undergone an MPW tape-out (prototyping) at the 28nm node, and reference boards will be available for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to test in the coming weeks.

Mindgrove Technologies not only sells the chip but also offers design support to Indian brands, helping accelerate innovation and production scale within India. It also designs specialized Al accelerators for edge computing. These chips are optimized for running machine learning models directly on devices, reducing latency and enhancing privacy. Applications include smart cameras, robotics, and industrial automation.

Backed by IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation and incubated in the IIT-Madras Incubation Cell, Mindgrove aims to put India on the map for semiconductor design. Leveraging the SHAKTI open-source processor program, the startup create new possibilities and keep the world on the edge

India's growing demand for microchips, coupled with the need for cost-effective solutions, makes Secure IoT a significant milestone in the country's semiconductor industry. Global buyers may also find this new option from India appealing.

IIT Madras Incubated Semiconductor Startup Mindgrove Raises $2.32 Mn in Seed Funding

Chennai-based Semiconductor startup MindGrove Technologies has secured $2.325 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India.

Other investors who participated in the round include Speciale Invest and Whiteboard Capital, as well as Ashwini Asokan, CEO of Mad Street Den, and Nischay Goel, CIO of Duro Capital, who participated in their personal.

Mindgrove designs state-of-the-art, scalable, and reliable System-on-Chips (SOCS) in India. These high-performance chips can be leveraged in power-constrained environments such as industrial automation, automotive, consumer electronics, defense, security, and aviation.

Founded in 2021, by Shashwath T. R. and Sharan Srinivas J., Mindgrove design cost and power-effective microprocessor technology in India, for the world. Mindgrove is backed by IIT Madras Incubation Cell, and IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation, a DST, Govt of India funded section 08 company housing the Technology Innovation Hub on Sensors, Networking, Actuators, and Control Systems (SNACS).

Mindgrove designs state-of-the-art, scalable, and reliable System-on-Chips (SOCs) in India. These high-performance chips can be leveraged in power-constrained environments such as industrial automation, automotive, consumer electronics, defense, security, and aviation.

Mindgrove’s series of 3 SoCs - System on Chips - are designed specifically for Edge signal processing and vision applications. They are based on the 'Shakti' core microprocessor which is amongst India’s first industrial grade microprocessors. Shakti was developed at the Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Lab at IIT Madras, under the Digital India RISC-V program funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) .

About the founders of Mindgrove, Shashwath is an electronics engineer by training. A graduate from SRM Engineering college, Shashwath worked at Lucid Software from 2006 to 2021. Lucid provides Non Destructive Testing (NDT) services to various heavy industries.

During his 15 year stint at Lucid, Shashwath developed specialised ultrasound devices, drivers and computer vision algorithms for the nuclear, oil and gas and the aerospace industry. He is an expert in systems engineering, signal processing and machine vision software.

While, Sharan is a computer scientist with an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College, Anna University (2012) and a masters degree in Computational Science from ETH Zurich.

At ETH Zurich, Sharan developed an interest in programming for high performance scientific applications. He worked at Lucid Software from 2016-2021 where he developed CUDA/OpenCL programs running on NVIDIA GPUs. At Lucid, Sharan got a taste of hardware and embedded programming, and also met Shashwath.

Mindgrove's journey so far has been made possible by a unique government - academia - industry collaboration. The semiconductor industry itself is a global industry and such collaborations have yielded high returns for countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan in the last few decades.