Mindgrove, IIT Madras's Chip Startup, Eyes Its First Revenue This Fiscal Year
IIT Madras-incubated Mindgrove Technologies expects first revenue from its own chips this fiscal year, with about six customers close and a 500-board pilot order.
As SEMICON India 2026 got under way this week, Mindgrove Technologies, a chip design startup incubated at IIT Madras, told Mint it expects to start earning revenue this fiscal year. It would be the first money the five-year-old company makes from its own locally designed chips.
Where the revenue should come from
Co-founder and CEO Shashwath TR said Mindgrove is in active discussions and trials with customers in biometrics, CCTV surveillance, metering and other applications. About half a dozen prospective customers are close to being finalised, though their deployment timelines vary.
The company is building two chips. The first is meant for connected devices such as smart cameras. It is due for commercial rollout by late 2026 and a small number of customers already use it. One is AtumX, a robotics education platform, whose pilot order covers an initial 500 chip-powered computing boards for teaching robotics in schools. Those pilots are planned for the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir, and possibly Tamil Nadu. Shashwath said the programme could bring in a few thousand orders a month.
The funding so far
Mindgrove was founded in February 2021. It raised $2.3 million in seed funding in February 2023 from Peak XV Partners (then Sequoia India) and Speciale Invest, then an $8 million Series A in December 2024, when Rocketship VC came in.
By global standards that is very little. Mint set it against Nvidia's $20 billion acquisition of Groq in December 2025. Mindgrove is now looking at the design-linked incentives under the Centre's Semicon 2.0 scheme, announced on 15 July with a ₹1.28 trillion outlay, and says it is talking to MeitY about what the next round of design incentives might offer.
Why Tamil Nadu should care
India's semiconductor news is mostly about fabs and assembly plants. Design is the part of the chain where Chennai already has something to build on, with IIT Madras and the startups coming out of its incubation network.
First revenue is when a chip project starts to look like a company. If Mindgrove gets there this year selling into cameras, meters and school robotics kits, that says something about whether Indian-designed chips can win ordinary commercial customers.
Source: Mint — Indian chip startup Mindgrove Technologies eyes first revenues this fiscal year