Mindgrove

Mindgrove designs cost-effective and scalable microprocessor technology in India for the global semiconductor market. The company designs System-on-Chips (SoCs), which are integrated circuits that combine all the elements of an electronic device onto a single chip instead of separate components.

Semiconductors are used in nearly every industry, from healthcare and communications to transportation and military systems, as well as clean energy. It’s a market that is expected to become a trillion-dollar industry by 2030.

While the semiconductor industry has grown in the last two decades, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of these semiconductors more than ever before – a supply crunch in semiconductor production drove massive delays across nearly all manufacturing industries, from cars to computers.

SoCs typically require a lot of power to perform well in devices. Mindgrove’s SoCs offer high performance with low power, making the chips ideal for use in applications where power usage may be constrained, such as consumer electronics and aviation. The company’s chips are based on Shakti, a core microprocessor that is among India’s first industrial-grade microprocessors.

Mindgrove was born out of a collaboration between the government, academia, and the startup industry at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. The company was founded by engineers Shashwath T R and Sharan Srinivas J in February 2021.

Shashwath is an electronics engineer who has developed specialized ultrasound devices, drivers, and computer vision algorithms for the nuclear, oil and gas, and aerospace industries. Sharan, a computer scientist, studied at ETH Zurich and is currently pursuing a PhD at IIT Madras. The duo worked at Lucid, a software firm, before starting Mindgrove.

*Angel investors: Ashwini Asokan and Nischay Goel.