Hope to sell designed-in-India auto chips in 2-3 years, says Mindgrove CEO

The company is looking to build general-purpose microcontroller chip that can be moulded and used across other devices, including those in the robotics space, co-founder and CEO Shashwath T R said

Homegrown chip-design startup Mindgrove Technologies hopes to start selling its designed-in-India automotive chips over the next two to three years, even as it strengthens its system-on-chip portfolio in the biometric, consumer appliance, and electronics industry in that time, says Shashwath T R, co-founder and chief executive officer.

 

“We have never hidden our automotive ambitions, of course, but the standards in automotive are very high. In fact, the only industries above automotive are space and defence. The product lifecycles in the automotive industry are very long because you do not launch a car every year, and they (automotive companies) do not change their platforms every year,” Shashwath told Business Standard in an exclusive interview.

 

The larger aim, he said, is to build a general-purpose microcontroller chip that can be moulded and used across other devices and applications, including those in the robotics space. The company is already in discussions with several companies to integrate this chip into their products, he said.

 

Last year December, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras-incubated startup raised $8 million Series A funding round from investors such as Rocketship.vc and Speciale Invest, with participation from Mela Ventures. Existing investors, including Peak XV Partners, Nishchay Goel, and Whiteboard Capital, as well as the new involvement from Anshul Goel, also participated in the funding round.

 

“It has been a long journey. We had to educate venture capitalists (VCs). We had to educate some of the VCs on what semiconductors are and what it takes to design a chip. The VC funding industry grew together with the semiconductor industry in the (Silicon) Valley, but somehow they grew apart over the years,” he said.

 

Although Mindgrove had to educate some of its investors, it had an advantage as its early investors, including the likes of PeakXV (formerly Sequoia Capital), had already started looking at deeptech-focused startups, Shashwath said.

 

“They had the historical, tribal knowledge to understand what a semiconductor meant. That was important. It is not just a matter of getting the money. It is also about getting the right partners,” he said.

 

The company’s second chip, which has been approved by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the Design-Linked Incentive scheme, is designed for various camera-based applications, including smart closed-circuit television cameras, he said.

 

Going forward, the company will first focus on achieving the right product-market fit and completing it successfully for clients before pursuing revenue or headcount growth, Shashwath said.