Silicon Swadeshi: How Mindgrove’s Chip Defies the Odds and Redefines India’s Tech Destiny 

The success of Chennai-based startup Mindgrove Technologies in designing India’s first commercial-grade, high-performance microcontroller chip marks a pivotal shift for the nation’s tech ecosystem, proving that India can move beyond its role as a software service provider to become an innovator and owner in the global semiconductor supply chain.

By leveraging IIT Madras’s open-source Shakti processor and operating as a fabless designer, Mindgrove created its “Secure IoT” chip, which embds hardware-level security for devices like biometric readers and smart meters.

This achievement, validated by a strategic partnership with Bosch, challenges the long-held notion that chip design is beyond India’s reach, creating a new model of intellectual property sovereignty, catalyzing the domestic packaging and testing industry, and laying the foundation for a future where technology is not just used but conceived and built within the country.

Silicon Swadeshi: How Mindgrove’s Chip Defies the Odds and Redefines India’s Tech Destiny 

In the global theater of technology, India has long played a starring role in software, but a supporting one in hardware. For decades, the narrative was clear: we design the brains, but the brains themselves are built elsewhere. The creation of a semiconductor—the pinnacle of complex manufacturing—was considered a bridge too far, an endeavor too capital-intensive and technologically dense for the Indian ecosystem. 

That narrative has just been shattered by a Chennai-based startup, Mindgrove Technologies, which has quietly designed, built, and validated India’s first commercial-grade, high-performance microcontroller chip. This isn’t just a startup success story; it’s a foundational shift, a quiet declaration that India can not only participate in the global silicon supply chain but can also innovate and own its place within it. 

The Audacity of a Simple Idea: Building the Physical in a Digital World 

The journey began not in a gleaming lab, but in the minds of two software engineers feeling a familiar itch. Shashwath TR and Sharan Srinivas, while skilled in writing code for industrial testing software, harbored a deeper desire to build something tangible. “We wanted to make something that was ours, something real,” Shashwath recalls. In a country celebrated for its software services, this desire to create physical technology was both radical and, to many, absurd. 

Their leap of faith in 2021 coincided with a crucial national awakening. As global supply chain shocks highlighted the perilous concentration of chip manufacturing in a few geographic corners, India began its own push for semiconductor self-reliance. Mindgrove arrived at the gates of IIT Madras with an idea at the perfect moment, securing a modest Rs 39-lakh grant that would become the seed for something far grander. 

Their masterstroke was leveraging the open-source Shakti processor project, an academic initiative spearheaded by Professor Veezhinathan Kamakoti. Instead of starting from a blank slate, Mindgrove’s mission became the commercialization of Shakti—transforming proven academic research into a robust, market-ready product. This symbiotic relationship between academia and a agile startup is a blueprint for how deep tech can thrive in India. 

The Art of “Writing Hardware”: More Than Just Code 

To the uninitiated, Mindgrove’s work as a “fabless” semiconductor company can be abstract. Shashwath offers an elegant analogy: “At the most basic level, what we do looks like writing software. But instead of compiling something that runs on a computer, we compile something that gives the computer itself a brain.” 

This process of translating abstract code into physical silicon is the soul of their endeavor. They design the intricate architectural blueprint of the chip—defining how billions of transistors will be arranged to execute commands efficiently and securely. This digital blueprint is then sent to a foundry like TSMC in Taiwan, which etches the design onto silicon wafers. It’s a high-stakes process; a single “tape-out” (the final design sent for manufacturing) can cost over a million dollars, and a single error can render the entire batch useless. 

Mindgrove’s first chip, the Secure IoT, is a System-on-Chip (SoC) built on the 28-nanometer process. This isn’t the cutting-edge 3nm node used for the latest smartphones, but it’s the sweet spot for the massive Internet of Things (IoT) market. It’s the brain that could power your smart meter, a point-of-sale machine, an industrial controller, or a biometric reader. By targeting this high-volume, cross-vertical segment, Mindgrove demonstrated a shrewd market sense alongside its technical prowess. 

The “Secure” in Secure IoT: A Foundational Principle of Trust 

What truly differentiates Mindgrove’s approach is its philosophical commitment to security, baked directly into the hardware. In an era of escalating cyber threats, a chip that is “secure by design” is not a luxury but a necessity. 

Shashwath explains this with a powerful example: a biometric sensor used for Aadhaar authentication. “When you put your finger on it, the derived data should only be readable by authorised hardware — not even the device itself should be able to see the raw fingerprint.” Mindgrove’s chip includes built-in encryption accelerators that enforce this principle, ensuring sensitive data is protected at the source. This hardware-rooted trust is far more robust than a software-level security patch, making it ideal for critical applications in identity, finance, and national infrastructure. 

The Ripple Effect: Why Mindgrove’s Chip is a National Inflection Point 

The success of Mindgrove is significant on multiple levels, far beyond the company’s own balance sheet. 

• Intellectual Property Sovereignty: India contributes roughly 20% of the world’s semiconductor design talent, yet, as Shashwath points out, “we have zero Indian-designed products in the market.” Our engineers have long been the hired hands for global giants, with the resulting IP and profits flowing overseas. Mindgrove flips this script. The IP is conceived, designed, and owned in India, creating a new model of value creation. 

• Ecosystem Catalyst: Mindgrove is not working in isolation. Its progress is actively catalyzing the entire Indian semiconductor ecosystem. The company is in talks with Kaynes, CG Power, and Tata Electronics for local Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging (ATMP). Furthermore, they plan to partner with Tata’s upcoming fab in Dholera. This creates a virtuous cycle where design houses spur the growth of domestic manufacturing and packaging, which in turn makes it faster and cheaper for the next generation of design startups to emerge. 

• Building for India’s Unique Needs: A chip designed in India can be optimized for the Indian environment. It can come with documentation in local languages, local technical support, and be designed to handle the specific power, connectivity, and cost constraints of the Indian market. This drastically reduces the time-to-market and development cost for local OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), empowering them to innovate more rapidly. 

• Strategic Partnerships and Global Validation: The collaboration with Bosch Global Software Technologies is a massive vote of confidence. For Bosch, it provides an agile partner building on the open-source RISC-V architecture, an strategic alternative to the dominant ARM. For Mindgrove, it offers global validation, a path to international markets, and the stamp of approval from one of the world’s most respected engineering brands. 

The Long Road Ahead and the Mindset for the Marathon 

Despite the milestones, the founders are under no illusions. The path from a working prototype to high-volume commercial success is a marathon. The company, having raised $8 million and secured government DLI funding, is wisely taking a breather to focus on market penetration before its next fundraise. 

The goal of EBITDA positivity by FY26-27 is a cautious one, acknowledging the long lead times and complex revenue recognition inherent in the hardware business. The development of their second, more complex Vision SoC for camera systems is already underway, demonstrating a relentless focus on a long-term roadmap. 

Mindgrove’s story is a powerful antidote to the stereotype of Indian tech being solely about software services or consumer apps. It proves that with the right blend of academic foundation, entrepreneurial audacity, strategic government support, and patient capital, India can compete at the deepest end of the technology pool. They haven’t just built a chip; they have built a new blueprint for ambition, proving that the most complex systems can indeed have a homegrown heart.