Chip design start-up Mindgrove raises $8 million to power commercial launch of first chip by mid-2025
Summary
Mindgrove Technologies, a Chennai-headquartered fabless semiconductor design startup, has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round. The start-up did not disclose the valuation, but it is learnt to be up almost 4 times from its previous seed round in early 2023.The round is co-led by American VC firm Rocketship.vc and existing backer Speciale Invest, with participation from Mela Ventures and existing investors Peak XV Partners, Nishchay Goel, Whiteboard Capital and new participation from Anshul Goel.Mindgrove, which designs high-performance SoCs (system-on-chips) at competitive prices for the Indian and global markets, will use the funds for the commercial production and sale of its first microcontroller SoC- Secure IoT, expand its team, and enhance in-house engineering capabilities.Earlier this year, the company launched unveiled the prototype of the 28 nm chip Secure IoT, which is designed for smart connected devices like watches, meters, access control units, printers and PoS machines among others.Speaking to businessline, Shashwath T R, CEO, Mindgrove Technologies, said that chip design start-ups like them currently face a chicken-and-egg situation when it comes planning production of the chips based on number of orders. It is capital that will help unlock this situation and by helping fund the first batch of commercial production it makes it easier to have customer conversations, he notes. The entrepreneur anticipates reaching the milestone of its first commercial sales by mid-2025 and notes a growing openness among prospective customers to buy an indigenously designed chip and align with local partners.In addition, Mindgrove received approval under the Indian Governments semiconductor Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme amounting to 15 Crore for developing a new chip -Vision SoC- meant for high-performance edge computing and vision processing applications CCTV cameras, dashcams, video recorders, etc.Currently a 40-member team, the start-up anticipates to be 100-member strong in two years. It plans to hire sales and marketing talent for Secure IoT and technical talent for Vision SoC and other future products.Mindgrove Technologies represents the future of Indias technology sector with its innovative solutions tailored for the needs of a rising India, Sailesh Ramakrishnan, Managing Partner at Rocketship.vc, said.Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest, an early backer of Mindgrove said that the successfully taped-out Secure IoT denotes innovation and cost-efficiency and addresses both domestic and global demand for high-performance.