Lip-Bu Tan, president and CEO, Cadence Design Systems, one of the world?s biggest Electronic Design Automation (EDA) firm, has invested in a rare Indian semiconductor start-up, Cosmic Circuits.

Tan, who had earlier invested in IT firm MindTree, has also joined the start-up firm?s board.

The quantum of investment was not disclosed either by Tan or the company. Bangalore-based Cosmic Circuits licences its IP to global chipmakers and makes silicon that goes into end products, such as tablets and cell phones. The six-year old firm has thus far shipped nine million chips. Being privately held, the firm does not disclose revenues, but has a topline CAGR of 35% and is profitable from the first year itself.

Cosmic Circuits is founded by four Indians ? Ganapathy Subramaniam, now the CEO of Cosmic Circuits, C Srinivasan, the firm?s VP of Engineering, Prakash Easwaran, CTO, and A Nagaraj, VP of Finance and Admin. While the seed capital for the firm came from the founders, Tan?s investment is the first external deal for the company.

Cosmic Circuits is a fables company and the firm has partnered with leading global foundries, such as TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, Fujitsu, NEC and SMIC, to manufacture its chips. Lip-Bu Tan has been a member of the Cadence Board of Directors since 2004. He had earlier founded venture capital firm Walden International in 1987 and has been active in the venture capital industry for the past two decades. Tan is credited with pioneering the US venture capital concept in Asia.

?I am very positive about India. I have backed MindTree before. I would like to see more end products coming out of India. Cosmic Circuits is a company I am very excited about and would like to see them scale. In the next 10 years, I would like to see some start ups from India become world class companies,? Tan told FE.

While India has many semiconductor design services companies, there are very few firms that sell their own chip or IP. Tan thinks this would change in the next decade as China and India become the largest consumer electronics markets in the world.