Semicon Startup Netrasemi Set to Launch Two Edge AI Chips

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
In a significant boost to the state’s semiconductor ecosystem, Technopark-based Edge AI semiconductor technology startup Netrasemi will collaborate with major surveillance and smart vision products OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) in India and abroad, coinciding with the launch of its two Edge AI chips this year.

Netrasemi CEO Jyothis Indirabhai said the company also aims to become one of the leading end-to-end smart vision silicon solution providers globally by 2028.

Revealing the company’s future plans during Technopark’s official vodcast, ‘Aspire: Stories of Innovation,’ Jyothis informed that the startup’s three chip families will be in the volume production stage by the end of 2026.

Founded by Jyothis Indirabhai, Sreejith Varma, and Deepa Geetha in 2020, Netrasemi is an Edge AI semiconductor technology company building systems on chip (SoCs) solutions to enable the new-age need for optimal computing for smart IoT products.

Commenting on the startup’s growth, Jyothis said that apart from the state-of-the-art infrastructure, Technopark’s biggest contribution is community building, which creates space for startups to interact with each other and create suitable technologies for the future.

The CEO said the Kerala’s capital city is ideal for the semiconductor ecosystem, where good raw talent is available. The startup has already created a trained workforce in the domain from the capital city.

“Semiconductor goes into product and there are multiple product companies in Technopark and across Kerala. This ecosystem is important for Netrasemi since we are actually getting great collaborations,” he pointed out.

According to him, extreme power efficiency and performance need to happen together in the chip to make it attractive in the Edge AI market and the system-on-chips designed by Netrasemi addresses this problem.

On the sector’s challenges, he said that strong investor familiarisation with the country’s semiconductor industry is vital to addressing the challenge of capital raising for startups in the sector.

Semiconductor is the fuel of the future product-making and nations are spending billions to build their semiconductor ecosystem.

Noting that Indian players used to import parts and sell them, Jyothis said they need to deviate from the traditional supply chain and use an India-made chip for products.

“Semiconductor is an extremely capital-intensive development process. At least several crores of rupees or around US$ 30 million needs to be spent on creating even the simplest of chips. We are in the middle of creating video analytic chips and sensor fusion chips. Edge AI is a new opportunity for the country and Kerala, where we can build products for this technology,” he said.

On creating a semiconductor ecosystem in Kerala, Jyothis opined that the government has to carefully consider factors like geographical situation, demography, and the quality of revenue and quality of employment it can create.

“There are multiple segments of semiconductors—semiconductor design and semiconductor fabrication. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. The government has to study and recognise what is apt for Kerala. Kerala ecosystem should tap the product opportunity, and it must have a product mission and a 10-year plan for the state’s product industry,” he explained.

Netrasemi is the first chip company in India to have AI/ML and vision hardware acceleration IPs for on-device video analytics capabilities based on a patented architecture. It is also one of the first Indian Die-to-Die silicon IP and chiplet solution providers.

The startup recently raised Rs 18.5 crore in seed rounds from Unicorn India Ventures and received Rs 15 crore in design-linked incentives (DLI) and Rs 5 crore in chip-to-startup (C2S) grants from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

Two of their chips (NetraSoC A2000 and R1000) are ready for fabrication in the world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC)’s advanced process nodes. These chips deliver up to 8 TOPS (tera operations per second) AI processing capabilities. They enable advanced video analytics and sensor fusion capabilities in devices like smart cameras, drones, robots, and automobiles.

Netrasemi has a strong 80-member design team in Thiruvananthapuram with end-to-end chip design and AI application development capabilities.