With an aim to giving a major boost to the Indian Chip Design Sector, the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, has launched Fabless Chip Design Incubator (FabCI) dedicated to incubate at least 50 Make-in-India chip design companies that can compete globally and generate Intellectual Property Rights.
The incubator is calling for early stage start-ups to apply. For more details, visit http://fabci.iith.ac.in/aboutus.php
The FabCI is funded by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. It will focus on creating an ecosystem for grooming startups in chip design. The incubator provides free software tools with leading technology partners in Electronic Design Automation, a good characterisation facility for testing chips and equipment for performing Direct Current (DC) and Radio Frequency (RF) characterisation.
The vision is to leverage the design expertise that exists in India to create Indian IP and to make a mark in chip design internationally. FabCI technology partners Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Mentor Graphics both are leading providers of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software, hardware and IP. The startups are provided with the relevant infrastructure, hardware and software and mentored to succeed with the help of mentors who are pioneers in this field.
Three startups are already being incubated —
lemonflip is working in innovative chip design IP for Energy Harvesting and high-performance RF modules to make battery less next generation smart electronics system.
WiSig Networks develops products including terrestrial cellular, non-terrestrial and defence applications. Its vision is to create a world’s leading IP company that specialises in Product IP 5G mobile communications, including mobile broadband and Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems.
The demand in the Indian market driven by higher consumption of electronic goods and our strategic needs for using technology in education, defense and healthcare industries is projected to reach USD 400 Billion by year 2020. Starting a company in Integrated Circuit design field is an enormous task as the hardware, software and the relevant infrastructure requires huge amount of capital investment. Developing a business model in this highly competitive domain is a non-trivial task. Mentorship by experts in both technical and business domains would hasten the process of transition from a startup to a revenue generating company.