Netrasemi charts India’s semiconductor dream

In a startup world where securing funding worth a few crores is celebrated as success and founders are paraded at various events as poster boys of tech triumphs, Netrasemi CEO and co-founder Jyothis Indirabhai strikes a different picture. Despite raising 107 crore rupees in investment, this former College of Engineering Trivandrum (CET) product sees it simply as validation of the hard work the Netrasemi team has put in over the last seven years. And he is getting ready to put in more.

The journey to this moment has been anything but ordinary. While most Indian startups chase quick wins in software and services, Netrasemi ventured into the treacherous waters of semiconductor design – a domain where patience is measured in years, not months, and where the complexities involved are many.

Netrasemi has completed its research and development phase and delivered its design to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). It will now fabricate chips – made for smart vision, CCTV cameras, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications – for further checks and evaluations of the physical wafer chips.

“The fact that investors like Zoho Corporation and Unicorn India Ventures are willing to invest this much is definitely a major confidence booster for us, as it’s a vote of confidence in our future products,” Jyothis reflects. “But as co-founders of the company, we are also taking on more responsibility when such funding comes in. Now we have an additional thing to remember: we have to ensure these investors are rewarded for the risk they are taking.”

Foundation Laid: The startup was co-founded by Jyothis, his wife Deepa Geetha, and his CET classmate Sreejith Varma. Geetha graduated from NSS College of Engineering, Palakkad, and went on to take her MTech from Manipal Institute of Technology. Their startup has completed development of two products. These system-on-chip (SoC) integrated circuits combine most key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip – the digital equivalent of fitting an entire orchestra into a smartphone.

At a time when almost every country is trying to manufacture critical components like microchips indigenously, Netrasemi's strides signal a remarkable boost for India’s ambition to be a global player in the manufacturing sector. Even Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, acknowledged this significance, stating that he hoped “Netrasemi will encourage other Indian startups.”

The Long Road: The complexity of microchip manufacturing explains why chip making remains confined to a few players – it demands immense talent, an appetite for risk, and the financial stamina to endure years without revenue. “The next phase for Netrasemi may last 12–18 months, and it is the validation of the design concept we have developed,” Jyothis explains. “During this period, we will have to ensure there are no bugs and that the design we developed is foolproof.”

Though Netrasemi was registered only in 2020, the co-founders had begun their work a couple of years earlier, after Jyothis decided to return to Trivandrum following a decade with Intel as a design manager.

“I was always a homesick person,” he laughs, before turning introspective. “But that was only one of the reasons. I realised that locating a chip design firm in India was not ideal, and there would be compromises that had to be made. But I was willing to take that risk, as I knew there was enough talent here that could be moulded into top chip designers.”

This observation is rooted in the early days of Jyothis’s career, when he was nosing around after graduating in 1995. Unknown to many, Kerala’s capital has a distinguished semiconductor pedigree. As a young engineer, Jyothis had worked as a researcher at ER&DC (later C-Dac), where he first glimpsed the world of chip design.

“The ER&DC centre in Trivandrum had a robust team led by people like my mentor Ravindran Nair, who had made the first-ever Indian chipset, Arjun-Krishna. That is what lured me into the field.”

Dreams Nuked: Jyothis’s early career trajectory reads like a geopolitical thriller. After ER&DC, he joined RR Sycore, one of India’s early Silicon IP companies, but the Chennai climate didn’t suit him. Returning to Trivandrum, he landed at Nest Software (later Quest Global) in 1997, where serendipity struck. The company needed someone familiar with chip design for Hitachi Engineering, which ran a foundry service for Hitachi Semiconductors – pioneers in 180-nanometre chips.

“I grabbed the chance with both hands and soon became one of the first foreign consulting chip design engineers recruited by the Japanese firm,” he recalls. The experience was transformative, earning him respect among his Japanese counterparts and deepening his chip design expertise.

But geopolitics intervened dramatically. In May 1998, India’s nuclear tests at Pokhran triggered international reactions, and Japan – the only country ever attacked with nuclear weapons – responded sharply. Tokyo imposed sanctions, and one such penalty barred Indian nationals from accessing technology using chips smaller than 300 nanometres.

That effectively ended Jyothis’s chip design career in Japan. So he looked elsewhere, and in 1999 found a job at a San Diego startup called Widcomm, a pioneer in Bluetooth technology.

A New World: “The startup scenario in the US is much more intense – it’s make-or-break, as the environment is far more unforgiving,” he observes. “It’s an environment where investors shy away from startups that promise a product in a short span. They value the effort put in by the founders and their thoroughness.”

He went on to play stellar roles in two more startups before joining the corporate world in 2005 as a micro-architect with Intel. This experience proved invaluable, giving Jyothis both a deep familiarity with startup culture and insight into the global market dominance of tech giants.

He also made sure to build financial stability during the decade he spent at Intel, creating a cushion for his eventual return to Trivandrum in 2014 to pursue his dream of building something of his own. It was a different tack from most Indian startup founders, who seek external funding early on just to stay afloat.

Against the Tide: Returning to India’s startup ecosystem in the pre-Covid era meant confronting a landscape obsessed with software-as-a-service (SaaS) ventures. Finding investors patient enough to understand the complexities of semiconductor manufacturing proved herculean.

“There were times when we co-founders were at our wits’ end,” Jyothis admits. “Some investors even advised us to consider an alternative course, as they just couldn’t fathom a gestation period of five or six years. They were demanding a minimum viable product – as they were used to with SaaS. For them, deep tech was an unfamiliar area.”

The venture began with half a dozen engineers, developing AI silicon intellectual property (IP) cores sought by the semiconductor industry. Bootstrapped consulting projects kept the company afloat, but the path remained treacherous. At one point, the co-founders even considered relocating to the United States.

Ironically, Covid-19 played an influential role in their journey. The pandemic lockdown and resulting supply chain disruptions prompted the central government to acquire costly chip-making tools and make them available to Indian startups, encouraging domestic chip production. These changes finally convinced the co-founders to register Netrasemi as a startup in 2020.

“Till then, we were unsure of the viability of an AI chip-making journey in India. The IP cores we built were sought after by AI chip manufacturers globally, and selling those would have been an established business model. But in 2020, we finalised our path – we were going to sell chips, and we were going to do it from India.”

Struggle and Support: The initial phase involved tackling mountains of problems, but crucial support came from an unexpected source: IIM Kozhikode’s incubation arm, IIMK LIVE, which provided seed funding of 30 lakh rupees in 2020. “Though it was a paltry amount for a chip firm, it came at a very crucial time and provided much-needed lifeblood for us, especially as the Covid lockdown had made things even tougher,” Jyothis acknowledges.

Battling the odds, the co-founders focused on building up the team and pushing ahead with their R&D. Signs of encouragement began to appear on the horizon, with the central government announcing the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme and the Chips to Startups (C2S) programme, both aimed at boosting startups like Netrasemi.

But frustration continued to mount. Even as the design phase neared completion, the silicon realisation process was crawling. What Netrasemi had expected to be completed in three months took significantly longer, even after all the promised support finally came through.

Yet Jyothis maintains a balanced perspective. “The work done by some officials in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and C-DAC (the DLI nodal agency) was phenomenal. It was a virgin territory, and they had to navigate it carefully. Sometimes they put in hours that would put startup founders in the shade – and they were doing it as part of their job, not to build a personal venture. In my opinion, the MeitY team is the best hardworking startup in India and gets very little recognition for their work.”

Talent Pool: Once support systems like access to high-end design tools and R&D funding came through, Netrasemi stepped on the gas, expanding its team to 83 engineers. “Most of our staff were recruited locally, and I find that India – especially Kerala – has a rich catchment area. Microchip design is an expanding field, and analysts predict a global shortage of chip design engineers. Policymakers should take note and act on this,” says Jyothis.

He himself has been conducting chip design classes at his alma mater for years and has trained hundreds of engineers over time. Jyothis believes Kerala can easily seize this opportunity by implementing a 20–25 crore rupee project to create a fountainhead of chip design talent that will soon be in demand across the globe.

The growth of India’s semiconductor sector is reflected in Netrasemi’s own journey: the startup attracted seed funding of 8 crore rupees, followed by a 10 crore pre-Series A investment from Unicorn India Ventures in 2024 – a far cry from the scenario Jyothis encountered when he returned from the US.

The Silicon Horizon: The latest funding from Zoho and Unicorn positions Netrasemi to become India’s first AI chip product company. They’re already planning additional products to enhance their lineup, confident of leading India’s charge into the global semiconductor market – and clearing the path for other Indian companies to follow.

In a country long reliant on chip imports, a startup from the capital of Kerala has shown that it’s possible to build from scratch – if the right kind of support is made available. This isn’t a story of overnight success. It’s one of perseverance and self-belief. And of a homesick engineer who came home to build something the country could one day call its own.

Armada gets a 131 million boost

Armada, the US-based edge data centre company with an R&D centre in Kerala, has announced a 131 million US dollar strategic funding round and the launch of its largest modular data centre, called Leviathan. The new product is capable of megawatt-scale performance and can be deployed rapidly in remote areas. Armada says the Leviathan model can be installed in weeks, compared to the time-consuming construction required for conventional data centres. It can operate on natural gas, solar, nuclear, or other alternative energy sources, reports Datacentre Magazine. “Leviathan embodies our belief that hardware should behave like software: deployable, upgradeable and governed entirely by code,” says Pradeep Nair, founding CTO of Armada.

Meanwhile, European nations are trying to gain relevance in the AI race by wooing large-scale data centres, and Norway has just announced that OpenAI will expand its Stargate data centre project into the country. Europe is targeting huge, energy-intensive projects they are calling “gigawatt factories” – essentially massive data centres with additional infrastructure to support new AI products. Apart from OpenAI, other tech giants are also in talks for similar centres. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has said his firm is helping build them in France, Italy, and the UK.

A battery pack for your car

Range anxiety is the biggest problem for electric vehicle owners – and that’s exactly what Assam-based grassroots innovator Divasjyoti Parashar set out to solve. He built a portable, solar-compatible, battery-based power station that fits in the trunk of a car, much like a phone’s battery pack. His startup’s flagship product, Qunit, began as a lightweight power station that gives EVs a 35–40 km boost – enough to reach the nearest charger or get home safely. YourStory reports that with its modular battery design, patented power electronics architecture, and solar compatibility, Quint is now being seen as a backup energy solution across sectors – from construction sites and disaster relief camps to rural healthcare centres and remote military outposts. “Their work is proof that frontier technology doesn’t need a Bengaluru zip code to thrive – it needs purpose, persistence, and vision,” says Parashar.

A strict teacher from ChatGPT

Students using ChatGPT to do homework is a growing headache for schools across the world as authorities worry it could undermine critical thinking skills. US schools were the first to ban it – then reversed course, and now some have started encouraging students to use it. OpenAI is responding with a new model called Study Mode, which will ask users questions to test their understanding and, in some cases, refuse to give direct answers unless students engage with the material, reports TechCrunch. However, students can easily switch back to regular ChatGPT mode if they just want the answer. Well, that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

AI drama continues in China

You’ve got to hand it to the Chinese – when it comes to innovation, they don’t just push the envelope, they shred it and rewrite the script. While we in Kerala are still clapping for students building humanoid robots that can mostly stand upright, the Shanghai Theatre Academy has gone full Shakespeare and admitted one into a four-year PhD programme in Drama and Film, specialising in traditional Chinese opera. Enter Xueba 01, developed by the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in collaboration with DroidUp Robotics. This AI-powered “artist” isn’t just there to observe – he wants to make friends, analyse scripts, fine-tune dance moves, and play calming white noise when classmates are feeling dramatic, reports South China Morning Post. One wonders how the actual drama queens on campus are going to handle the competition.