Semiconductor industry veteran and former CEO of Tata Electronics OSAT, P Raja Manickam, on Saturday launched a new fabless semiconductor start-up, iVP Semi, focused on localising design and chip production.
“We have good chip design companies. Tata is also coming up with a chip manufacturing (fabrication). What we need are product companies that can put this together and build products, which is what iVP will do,” said Manickam, CEO, indiaVP Semiconductor.
Currently, the space is crowded with players like SD Micro, Infineon, OnSemi, Nexperia, and Texas Instruments, none of which are Indian companies. “There are no major Indian players in this space because we didn’t have chip manufacturing (fabrication),” said Manickam.
In March, Tata Electronics broke ground for its `91,000 crore semiconductor fabrication facility at the Dholera Special Investment Region in Gujarat.
The company is also setting up a `27,000 crore Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility in Morigaon, Assam, while Murugappa Group’s CG Power and Industrial Solutions also kicked off construction work for its `7,000 crore OSAT facility in Gujarat in the same month.
“We will buy wafers from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. We will get the packaging done in India once Tata and CG Power start their operations. We will do the testing at our end before selling to end consumers,” he added.
Semiconductor manufacturing involves several different stages, including design, fabrication, OSAT, and electronic design automation. Fabless companies like iVP Semi fall in the design stage, where companies design semiconductor chips but outsource the manufacturing to foundries. Qualcomm and NVIDIA are examples of fabless semiconductor companies.
Manickam said the company will initially focus on offering chips to the power sector, including renewable energy, battery storage, and transmission requirements. “Grids are increasingly becoming smart grids, so there are huge opportunities for the electronics market in this space,” he said, adding that the total addressable market in the power space could be $3.5 billion.
iVP Semi has raised $5 million in a pre-series A funding round for scaling up operations and setting up testing facilities. The company is targeting revenue of $70-100 million in the next 3-4 years.
iVP Semi is setting up chip design centers in Chennai and Bengaluru and also licensing product IP from Taiwan, Japan, and the US. The company is also working with the Tamil Nadu government to set up a 20,000 sq ft production test facility in Chennai, with a planned second facility at another location in South India. An asset-light fabless company, iVP Semi will offer employment opportunities to around 250-300 people in the next 3 years.