The young techie who is building India's possible answer to Intel and AMD

As a PhD student at IIT-Madras, Neel Gala participated in the ambitious SHAKTI programme; he is now working towards making India self-reliant in chip design

This thirty-year-old young man has a dream and it isn't ordinary. A team member of SHAKTI Processor Systems, the programme run by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras to develop India's own indigenous chips, Neel Gala has a vision to break the monopoly of multinational corporations in this field.

Gala, who is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Chennai-based InCore Semiconductors, has set a clear mission ahead of him to reduce India's dependence on imported microchips.

"Though India houses a quite few facilities owned by global companies engaged in the architecture of microprocessors, the country is typically treated only as