iVP Semiconductor: India’s first fabless chip firm goals for $70 million income

iVP Semiconductor Pvt Ltd is more likely to go down in historical past as India’s first fabless chip firm—an organization that designs semiconductor chips as merchandise and owns the mental property, although the manufacture, meeting, testing, and packaging of the chips will probably be outsourced. 

The corporate was arrange by P Raja Manickam, a semiconductor veteran, who labored for the US big Texas Devices earlier after which arrange and ran the ₹1,000-crore Tessolve Ltd earlier than promoting it to the Hero group. 

Funding and progress plans

“iVP Semiconductors will probably be an Indian chip firm, competing with overseas corporations,” Manickam instructed a press convention right here in the present day. The purpose is to realize annual revenues of no less than $70m in 3-4 years. The corporate has secured $5m in pre-series A funding. 

“We’re a chip firm, not a design firm,” he stated, stressing that the corporate will personal merchandise. 

• Learn:India’s semiconductor ambitions will probably be led by massive gamers like Tata group: Raja Manickam

The beginning-up is concentrating on the “great alternatives” within the energy sector. It should make semiconductor chips for electronics in photo voltaic inverters, sensible grids, and 2-wheeler batteries. On this, it competes with corporations like ST Micro and Infineon. 

Requested why a buyer would purchase from iVP Semi reasonably than from these massive corporations, Manickam stated that the massive MNCs would not have chips designed completely for India, however iVP Semi would do. “Our mission is to “obtain better technological autonomy,” says a press launch issued by iVP Semi. 

Semiconductor segmentation

The semiconductor business is broadly divided into three elements—design (creating digital circuits), manufacture (fabrication in a foundry, the place the circuits are etched on a silicon wafer) and ‘meeting, testing, marking and packaging’ (ATMP). Whereas being acknowledged for its design capabilities, India has no fab—the Tata group has simply begun constructing one, with an funding of Rs 91,000 crore. In ATMP, corporations like Micron and CG Semi have come as much as construct services. 

Manickam harassed that iVP Semi, following an “asset-lite” mannequin, would solely have the design and testing a part of ATMP—all different parts of the worth chain could be outsourced. Even for testing, the corporate is speaking to the Tamil Nadu authorities to arrange ‘widespread check services’ that many corporations might use. 

Because the demand for electronics goes up, so does the demand for semiconductors, that are on the coronary heart of digital parts. Semiconductor business professional G S Madhusudan, who was a part of the workforce that developed the Shakti processor at IIT Madras and is now the CEO of Incore, an organization that manufactures processors, instructed businessline that there have been no less than 5 rising areas driving the demand for chips – vitality meters, sensible playing cards, BLDC motors, controllers and battery administration programs in electrical automobiles and point-of-sales gadgets. 

He famous that if India develops its personal chip merchandise, it could seize 15-20 per cent of the massive marketplace for chips priced beneath $5.