In May this year, Peak XV, formerly Sequoia Capital India led a $3 million seed round in IIT-Madras-incubated InCore Semiconductors. InCore is a semiconductor firm developing RISC-V open-sourced architecture-based semiconductor processors, with the long-term objective of weaning India off imported chips. Co-founder and CEO GS Madhusudan stressed that there was nothing more important than prototyping in applied fields like semiconductors.

IIT-M started semiconductor research in 2007, under the leadership of Professor V Kamakoti, and Madhusudan joined their flagship RISC-V platform-the Shakti project-in 2012. InCore, registered in 2018, intends to target first the embedded application processors that account for two-thirds of processors in electronic devices. Already, they have achieved good momentum, with two processor families already shipping into customers, and a more advanced version running at 1.5GHz coming their way.

InCore is a part of the growing ecosystem in India, though some of the components still come from abroad. However, initiatives such as fab and OSAT plants from the Tata group address this to an extent. InCore has collaborated with companies like HCL and Tessolve on the design of complete chip solutions for sectors such as Electricity Meters and Cameras, hence Indian customers can place direct orders.

For a long time, people in India have been designing chips for others; now they can design them for themselves,” Madhusudan said. The only missing pieces are the supply chain infrastructure and product marketing, both of which India is now working on building.