IndieSemiC Bold 20-Cent Chip Challenge

IndieSemiC was founded three years ago by Nikul Shah with a clear ambition: build a fabless semiconductor company in India that owns its products rather than selling design services to others.

"We are a fabless company and fundamentally, a product company, not a services business. Our focus is on building and selling products that we develop in-house," Shah says.

But rather than diving straight into chip design, the company made a pragmatic entry through RF modules: small electronic devices used in wireless, short-to-medium-range communication. These modules are built using off-the-shelf chipsets from companies like Nordic Semiconductor and Semtech for applications including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and LoRa connectivity.

The strategy worked as a bridgehead. IndieSemiC built a portfolio of over 15 certified modules and deployed around 60,000 units in the past year. Shah is targeting a million units this year, alongside entry into the US and European markets once the relevant certifications are in place.

Modules, however, are explicitly a starting point. The real goal is the chip.

IndieSemiC's first chip is currently under development. It is a general-purpose microcontroller coming in two variants. One is designed for non-IoT applications, replacing legacy microcontrollers used across industries. The second integrates LoRa connectivity, enabling long-range communication use cases for IoT deployments. The chip is expected to operate at 200 MHz and support lightweight machine learning workloads at the edge.

The competitive context matters here. Global players like STMicroelectronics, Espressif Systems, and Texas Instruments dominate the microcontroller market with standardised products shipped at scale. Chinese manufacturers undercut them further on price. IndieSemiC is not trying to beat either on raw cost alone.

Instead, the startup is positioning itself as a partner rather than just a supplier: one that can adapt firmware, customise features, and respond quickly to specific requirements that large chipmakers have no incentive to address.

"Indian OEMs increasingly look to diversify supply chains and reduce dependence on imports. A domestic alternative with strong engineering support will gain traction," Shah says.

The company has already signed a partnership with electronics manufacturing services company Syrma SGS and is in active discussions with India-based OEMs including VVDN.

Beyond the microcontroller, IndieSemiC is also working on SoC design. The company recently partnered with Prizor Viztech, a security and surveillance solutions provider, to develop and deploy a CCTV-specific SoC called ISC-S2-PZ.

Its quad-core AI processor, ISC-R1, targets next-generation automotive and surveillance systems, radar, lidar, camera feeds, real-time vision computing, and neural network inferencing.

"SoCs are the future for India, and it is an area where domestic capability needs to be built. What we are working on is an affordable SoC. Today, a large share of chips coming from China are priced very low, often in the range of 10 to 20 cents, and that sets the benchmark for the market," Shah says.

The company is also building with Indian intellectual property as a deliberate strategy, leveraging the VEGA processor architecture developed by C-DAC alongside internally developed IP blocks, with the aim of reducing reliance on foreign technologies over time.

IndieSemiC follows a fabless model, outsourcing fabrication while keeping design and product development in-house. It is in discussions with foundries including TSMC and GlobalFoundries for wafer production. For packaging and assembly, it has signed an agreement with Kaynes Technology, which will anchor part of the supply chain domestically through a Sanand-based OSAT facility.

The flow being structured is: wafers sourced from overseas foundries, packaging done in India, and testing conducted within India. It is a model that keeps design control local while tapping global manufacturing capability.

On the customer side, IndieSemiC has onboarded over 80 clients through its module business, with deployments across smart metering for water, gas, and electricity, automotive applications, consumer electronics, asset tracking, and drone communication.

The company reported revenue of approximately Rs 87 lakh in the year ended March 2025, with a loss of around Rs 40 lakh in the same period. It is bootstrapped, and a Series A fundraise is being planned to fund chip tape-out, expand the design team, and accelerate production. The company is also applying for support under the IT ministry's Design Linked Incentive scheme version 2.0.

IndieSemiC is not operating in isolation. On the domestic front, it competes with the likes of Mindgrove Technologies, CalligoTech, Chipspirit, and Vervesemi, each working on high-performance RISC-V CPUs, security solutions, and specialised chips for motor control and edge AI.

Zooming out, building a successful SoC business in India carries well-known obstacles: high development costs, IP licensing, expensive EDA tools, long design cycles, and the persistent challenge of go-to-market execution.

Ashok Chandak, president of the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, frames it clearly: "Building an SoC is a high-risk, high-reward proposition." He believes the opportunity for Indian startups lies in targeting focused, application-specific markets such as smart energy meters, CCTV, and industrial control, rather than chasing the complexity of smartphone or compute chips.

That is precisely the lane IndieSemiC has chosen. The company is targeting shipments of 5 to 10 Mn units across modules and SoCs by 2030. Whether it gets there will depend on bringing its first chip to market, scaling manufacturing, and converting its existing customer base into long-term buyers.