Coming up in the next episode of Conversations at India Tech Report, Vinod Shankar, founding managing partner at Java Capital, discusses a note he wrote recently, calling on India’s ultra rich to back deep innovation in the country with just 10 percent of their money.
They can afford this, and he does so with his own money, Vinod says. The result of this collective effort, if it happens, could be the transformation of India’s science and engineering innovation landscape, he argues.
Catch the full interview right here on Tuesday, June 23 at 6 a.m. IST. Here’s a 90 second preview.
HCLTech will invest Rs. 1,427.25 crore for a 10.46 percent stake in Sarvam AI, leading its $234 million Series B funding round to advance sovereign AI.
India and France have adopted the Innovation Roadmap 2030, establishing a framework for bilateral cooperation in trusted AI, critical technologies, and academic mobility.
The Lede
It boils down to what is viable, especially when it comes to an endeavour like making a semiconductor chip from a nascent ecosystem like the one in India, with the expectation that customers will actually buy it in volume.
That means, even if two founders are industry veterans and they’ve assemble a strong team of engineers, designers and marketers, everything gets determined by how much money is available. In India, a Series A is in the range of $10-15 million for a chip design company, and sometimes less. And, it takes a long time to raise even this.
Siva and Ganesh, who’ve together close to half a century of experience under their belt, look at HrdWyr as a commercial enterprise for sure — they have VC investors, after all — but also as a “nation building” contribution.
And the investors who led their Series A are like-minded. Naganand Doraswamy and Suryaprakash Konanuru at Ideaspring Capital, would like to back ventures like HrdWyr with as long a runway as they can make possible, but with the limited resources of an early stage VC firm.
HrdWyr, founded in 2023, is following through by year end on the small, but historic, milestone it announced August last, as you’ll hear in the conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
In today’s episode, Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO at HrdWyr, a semiconductor design startup in Bengaluru, talks about the company’s plans after recently raising $13 million in Series A funding, in an investment led by Ideaspring Capital. The company was co-founded in 2023 by Siva and Ganesh Guruswamy, both industry veterans spanning companies including Intel,…
That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.
In today’s episode, Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO at HrdWyr, a semiconductor design startup in Bengaluru, talks about the company’s plans after recently raising $13 million in Series A funding, in an investment led by Ideaspring Capital.
The company was co-founded in 2023 by Siva and Ganesh Guruswamy, both industry veterans spanning companies including Intel, AMD, Sandisk and Motorola.
In this conversation, Siva talks about how the era of custom silicon is upon us and what the AI-led opportunity represents. The company specialises in System-on-Chip (AISoC) designs tailored for edge computing and applications like electric vehicles and industrial equipment.
HrdWyr’s first product, named Indus 1011, is expected to hit the market by the end of this year, Siva says. In August last year, the company had announced it had picked Tata Electronics as the packaging partner and also that Indian consumer electronics company boAt would be an anchor customer for the chip — a small, but historic milestone for India’s semiconductor aspirations. boAt is to use this chip, which offers power management as a core feature, in its truly wireless earbuds charging case.
As many of you know, startups such as HrdWyr are getting funded in the time of a broader national push in India for semiconductor self-reliance, supported by significant government investment. Siva notes, however, that significant challenges remain, such as the lack of timely and adequate funding at critical stages.
Still, he thinks that the only way forward is to look at the aggregate of all the ongoing efforts — from startups such as HrdWyr to conglomerates like Tata setting up foundries and OSATs — as an opportunity to tap a trillion-dollar sector, and, as a nation building mission.
In August last year, a little known semiconductor startup (at the time) founded by two industry veterans from India, announced a small, but historic milestone. Not just for themselves, but the country.
The startup, HrdWyr Ventures, now more popularly, just HrdWyr, had struck two partnerships, one with Tata Electronics for the packaging of its first chip, and the other with boAt, the consumer electronics company, as an anchor customer for the new processor.
boAt would use their chip, named Indus 1011, in its truly wireless stereo earbuds charging cases, the companies had announced. Earlier this month, HrdWyr announced the successful close of its Series A funding round, raising $13 million in an investment led by the well known Bengaluru deep tech VC firm Ideaspring Capital.
Last week, I got a chance to sit down with Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO of HrdWyr to get a sense of what next for him, Ganesh Guruswamy, and their team of 18 engineers.
Catch the full interview right here tomorrow, 6 a.m. IST. Here’s a quick preview, in which Siva talks about the practical decisions semiconductor entrepreneurs have to make, especially when they decide to go build in a nascent ecosystem such as the one in India.
That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.
In August last year, a little known semiconductor startup (at the time) founded by two industry veterans from India, announced a small, but historic milestone. Not just for themselves, but the country.
The startup, HrdWyr Ventures, now more popularly, just HrdWyr, had struck two partnerships, one with Tata Electronics for the packaging of its first chip, and the other with boAt, the consumer electronics company, as an anchor customer for the new processor.
boAt would use their chip, named Indus 1011, in its truly wireless stereo earbuds charging cases, the companies had announced. Earlier this month, HrdWyr announced the successful close of its Series A funding round, raising $13 million in an investment led by the well known Bengaluru deep tech VC firm Ideaspring Capital.
Last week, I got a chance to sit down with Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO of HrdWyr to get a sense of what next for him, Ganesh Guruswamy, and their team of 18 engineers.
Catch the full interview right here tomorrow, 6 a.m. IST. Here’s a quick preview, in which Siva talks about the practical decisions semiconductor entrepreneurs have to make, especially when they decide to go build in a nascent ecosystem such as the one in India.
