Mindgrove Technologies Unveils India's First High-Performance Microcontroller Chip | CNBC TV18

The music, the. Welcome back, you’re watching startup St. Peak 15 Partners. Bagged Minddrove Technologies has launched Indias first commercial system on chip or SoC. The Chennai based startup has said this chip comes at a 30% lower cost than other chips in a similar segment. They added that this Indian chip commercially available in this segment and CNBC TV 18 Jute Sarath visits mindroves lab in Chennai to get a sneak peek at the new microcontroller and finds out what it will mean to the world of smart devices. Take a look. What you’re seeing here is the first Indian made system on chip or SoC, designed and built by semiconductor startup Mindgrove Secure IoT. That’s what they’re calling it for now. Could help smartwatches, chimneys, washing machines, and smart lockers get cheaper while continuing to retain their smart features. Mindgroves founders Shashwat and Sharan say they managed to make this happen by simply marrying the computing ability of a microprocessor and the connecting ability of a microcontroller. Five years ago, you had a washing machine. Typically the washing machine might have had a very basic 1 megahertz microcontroller inside it. But now you’re asking the washing machine to connect to Wi-Fi and give you status updates and you’re trying to control it from wherever you are and that requires more processing power. So secure IoT is a device which integrates these two worlds, the micro controller and the microprocessor, and also adds a layer of security because again, now we are talking about connected smart devices. What secure IoT brings to the table is that the chip is truly Indian at its core. What this means is a wide variety of use cases, more amenable to the local market and at a more attractive cost proposition. Mindgrove also says that the chip has been designed and built for Indian climatic conditions, which means its as sturdy as can get. That’s the key differentiator, Mindgrove says. Secure IoT is not only a chip built for India, but for a rugged rural Indian market that is quickly adopting smart connected devices. The fact that it’s 30% cheaper than competition is a nice bonus online and look for in the suitable ecommerce websites. If you go look at these chips, they’ll have a temperature range, it’ll say 0° to 85°. Smartphones typically come into that picture or -20 to 85°C. You can’t do that in India because of the the way our geographies are. You have to design to the temperature range that the Indian, the geography of India set up for and that’s what we’ve done. Both founders say that what truly makes the chip unique is a last mile customization element that is seeing Minegrove speak to device designers and strike a balance between including important chip features at effective costing. One of our strategies has been going to high volume customers 1st and they will need the final samples of the chip to confirm everything. So what is currently happening is that we are in the process of giving them those samples, getting everything done because they have given us expectations and in house tests have passed. Now it’s a matter of giving it to them, waiting for them to finish their their side of testing and then we sign and we are, we are ready to rock’n’roll if you will. The idea here is to take the chip into full volume production by the end of the year. As we sign these contracts, we will have the visibility to place that order on the formula. The startup says it’s confident of selling secure IoT in overseas markets too, given its sustainability to extreme climatic conditions from hot and dry to cold or wet within India. However, the fact remains there’s still a long way to go before the right kind of fabrication infrastructure is set up within the country. So for the moment, secure IoT will be made in Taiwan. The chip is currently not fabricated in India because there are no foundries in India yet. We know that of fabrication plant was just started at Gujarat, looking forward to that coming up, but we are currently manufacturing outside India. But these modules that we are talking about and finishing with our customers, they will be assembled, manufactured in inside India within the geographical boundaries of India. But with fabrication infrastructure investments in the pipeline, the future looks bright for SOC’s and semiconductor startups. Minegrove raised $2.3 million in a seed round last year led by Peak 15 Partners. The startup still in a pre revenue stage says it is in talks with new investors is seeing renewed interest and may well raise another round before the year end. However, it’s tight lipped about just how much it plans to raise. The principal focus is sell, sell more and sell even more. So what we what we may or may not raise would directly depend on what we need to do to enable us to sell and sell more. So number therefore would be dependent on that. If we find an opportunity window that we need to quickly exploit and get into the market then we’ll raise appropriately to in Chennai. JODH Sanath, OK. On that note, we’re going to wrap up.