Made-in-India AI Chip: IndieSemiC and C-DAC Sign MoU for Semiconductor Self-Reliance

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• IndieSemiC and C-DAC Trivendrum Sign MoU for Semiconductor and Embedded Systems Collaboration
• IndieSemiC and C-DAC Trivendrum signed an MoU to collaborate on semiconductor and embedded system development.
• Collaboration to build an indigenous hardware and software ecosystem using THEJAS-32
• Focus on reducing reliance on imported chipsets and supporting India’s semiconductor goals

IndieSemiC, an India-based semiconductor design firm working on chip, RF, and system-level solutions, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a national R&D institution under MeitY focused on advanced computing and indigenous processor development, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on semiconductor and embedded system development. The collaboration includes joint development of an AI chip based on C-DAC Trivendrum’s 64-bit VEGA processor, integrated with an on-chip Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The chip is intended for applications including smart meters, smart city systems, industrial IoT, defence electronics, and sensor-based applications. The partnership also focuses on creating a fully indigenous hardware and software ecosystem using C-DAC Trivendrum’s THEJAS-32 microcontroller to develop a Made-in-India alternative to commonly used foreign microcontrollers.

IndieSemiC is an India-based semiconductor company engaged in the design and development of integrated circuits, RF modules, and system-level solutions for embedded and industrial applications. Under the MoU, C-DAC Trivendrum will provide processor intellectual property along with technical support for system-on-chip integration, validation, and testing, while IndieSemiC will lead the design, development, and system integration of chipsets and RF modules. The collaboration will support applications across industrial controllers, robotics, medical devices, consumer appliances, automotive electronics, and embedded systems, and aligns with the national objective of Atmanirbhar Bharat and semiconductor self-reliance.

Commenting on the collaboration, Jinal Shah, Co-Founder and CMO, IndieSemiC said, “This collaboration marks a structured step towards integrating indigenous processor intellectual property with system-level semiconductor design and execution. By combining C-DAC Trivendrum’s processor capabilities with IndieSemiC’s expertise in chip, RF, and system integration, the partnership aims to deliver application-ready semiconductor solutions for industrial, infrastructure, and strategic use cases. The engagement supports consistent design, validation, and deployment workflows that are aligned with national requirements for security, reliability, and domestic capability development.”

The collaboration will also focus on coordinated roadmaps for processor adoption, reference designs, and system validation to support faster deployment across target sectors. Joint efforts will address interoperability, software enablement, and testing to facilitate adoption by system integrators and product developers.

The MoU is valid for three years, with an option for extension by mutual consent. Any press release or public communication related to the collaboration will require prior approval from both parties.

About IndieSemiC

IndieSemiC is engaged in the design and development of semiconductor chipsets, RF modules, and embedded system solutions. The company focuses on system-on-chip design and integration for applications across industrial, automotive, consumer, and embedded electronics domains.

IAN Group Announces Final Close of its Second VC Fund IAN Alpha Fund with US$100 Mn

IAN Group, the country’s single largest early-stage investment platform, has announced the final close of its 2nd VC Fund - IAN Alpha Fund with US$100 million. The Fund will invest in early-stage companies / MSMEs with strong founders, solving real problems, leveraging technology and innovation, including those aligned to India’s national strategic imperatives. While deep tech remains at the heart of its investment thesis, the IAN Alpha Fund follows a carefully structured risk-mitigation strategy, balancing innovation led long-gestation ventures with shorter-cycle businesses. This approach ensures a high return proposition for investors while enabling the fund to continue supporting frontier technologies that require patient capital and domain expertise.

Since its launch, the Fund has already invested in 10–12 pioneering startups, many of them led by first-generation founders based across India, including Tier II and Tier III cities. These startups are leveraging breakthrough technologies such as AI, space tech, semiconductors, biotech, and are increasingly developing indigenous solutions in healthcare, climate, manufacturing, cybersecurity, environment etc. that align closely with India’s developmental goals.

The investors of the Fund have signalled strong confidence in IAN’s capability and proven track record in identifying and scaling high-potential ventures. The IAN Group is delighted to have an exceptional set of marquee investors, including government investors such as the DPIIT - Fund of Funds for Startups managed by SIDBI, Self Reliant India Fund, ACE Fund, Odisha Startup Growth Fund, and Agri Sure Fund of Funds Scheme managed by Nabventures Ltd., as well as institutional investors including Buimerc Corporation Ltd., Dubai, HDFC Life, DS Group Family Office, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, alongside select family offices and individual investors. Notably, a significant portion of the corpus has been contributed by returning investors, reflecting deep trust and continued conviction in the Group’s vision and performance.

This Fund endorses IAN’s two-decade track record of investing in and growing companies. Its portfolio of 250+ companies today stand at a market valuation of almost $10 billion, in sectors such as space tech, biotech, defence tech, AI/ML, SaaS, robotics, fintech, health tech, manufacturing tech, consumer tech, etc.

Mentorship and strategic guidance, the IAN Group’s hallmark, remain central to the Fund’s philosophy. The company’s founder-first philosophy, extensive industry knowledge, and structured mentorship framework have all been crucial in helping firms grow from concept to scale over the years. By giving entrepreneurs access to top-notch strategic advice, governance support, and market insights, the IAN Alpha Fund carries on this legacy by assisting founders in overcoming difficult obstacles, accelerating innovation, and creating long-lasting, rapidly expanding businesses. The Fund guarantees focused execution and ongoing wealth development across its portfolio, supported by an accomplished leadership and investment team.

Saurabh Srivastava, Co-founder, IAN Group, said, “India's biggest opportunity is to transform its problems into innovation-driven businesses. While the founder is at the centre of IAN Alpha Fund’s thesis, it is critical that technology is leveraged to scale the solution for a large market, both in India and then globally. This fund aims to breed companies that bring a paradigm shift to industry and become global leaders.”

Padmaja Ruparel, Co-founder, IAN Group, said, “The IAN Alpha Fund’s thesis is to invest and breed innovation solving real problems or building for India’s strategic imperatives. The role that the Fund plays is way beyond funding, to bring mentoring, market access, and governance frameworks for these early companies. The Fund focuses on technology innovation by Indians, from India, for India & the globe.”

Chintan Thakkar, Group CEO, IAN Group, said, “IAN’s unique strength is an early-stage investment platform that enables entrepreneurs to raise from Rs. 50 lakhs to Rs. 50 crores with handholding from domain and industry experts. The IAN Group continues to focus on improving lives, promoting inclusivity, and establish India as a leader worldwide.”

By combining patient capital, mentorship, and strategic partnerships, the IAN Alpha Fund is catalyzing the next generation of founders who are building solutions. Its continued growth marks a defining moment in India’s journey toward becoming a global innovation hub — where every rupee invested helps solve real problems, create jobs, and build national capability.

About IAN Group:

IAN Group is India’s largest horizontal platform for seed and early-stage investments, comprising the IAN Angel Fund, BioAngels, and a series of SEBI-registered venture capital funds. It enables entrepreneurs to raise anywhere from Rs. 50 lakhs to Rs. 50 crores, supported by capital, high-quality mentoring from successful founders, and access to global markets. Sector-agnostic in its approach, IAN Group backs founders across domains and helps them scale their companies across India and beyond. Forbes has recognised IAN as one of the most iconic business and economic developments of Independent India over the last 75 years, alongside institutions such as LIC, NASSCOM, the RBI, and Naukri.com.

Virtusa Acquires Bengaluru-based SmartSoC, Enters Semiconductor Engineering With Full Chip-to-Cloud Capabilities

Virtusa Corporation, a leading product and platform engineering services company, today announced the acquisition of SmartSoC Solutions, the Bengaluru-based leader in semiconductor engineering and integrated circuit (IC) design services. This acquisition marks a pivotal moment for Virtusa, immediately expanding its industry portfolio to include the high-growth semiconductor sector and completing its full-stack, end-to-end service capabilities, spanning the entire digital technology ecosystem from the chip to the network, cloud, and application layer. The integration of SmartSoC, with its deep expertise in silicon design, verification, and embedded systems engineering, firmly positions Virtusa to capitalize on the secular demand for advanced silicon driven by global digital transformation.

The acquisition also establishes Virtusa’s semiconductor engineering footprint in India and strengthens its global delivery capabilities by integrating SmartSoC’s engineering presence across Bengaluru, Hubli and Hyderabad, including a significant tier-2 delivery centre in Hubli. Additionally, the move brings more than 1,400 highly skilled engineers with depth in VLSI, physical design and embedded software, further strengthening Virtusa’s capacity to deliver high-quality, cost-effective engineering services at scale.

Nitesh Banga, President & CEO, Virtusa Corporation

Commenting on the acquisition, Nitesh Banga, Chief Executive Officer of Virtusa, said “The acquisition of SmartSoC is transformational for Virtusa. It immediately establishes us as a key player in the high-growth semiconductor engineering space, completing our vision for a full-stack offering that can serve clients from the foundational silicon layer all the way through to the customer application. As AI models become more complex and data centre investment surges globally, having in-house chip design capabilities is crucial. This move not only diversifies our industry presence but ensures we are architecting the future, from the base layer of silicon up, positioning us at the very heart of innovation.”

The existing leadership team, led by Chief Executive Officer Bharath Desareddy, will remain unchanged and continue to oversee all delivery programs and client engagements. All current project structures, contractual commitments and service agreements will continue as they are.

Bharath Desareddy, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SmartSoC Solutions, said, “Joining forces with Virtusa is an incredible opportunity for the SmartSoC team and our customers. Our combined strengths create a unique market proposition: a comprehensive, end-to-end digital engineering partner with true chip-to-cloud capabilities. Virtusa’s global scale, deep relationships with Fortune 100 clients, and digital engineering heritage will allow us to accelerate our growth, expand our service offerings, and immediately bring significant value to the world’s leading semiconductor and technology companies. We are excited to combine our specialized engineering talent with Virtusa's commitment to client excellence.”

The semiconductor and systems engineering market is experiencing unprecedented growth, fueled by the massive increase in the building of smarter devices and the exponentially increasing investments in data centres and AI infrastructure. As the world rapidly shifts toward generative AI and edge computing and beyond, the need for cutting-edge, power-efficient chip design is critical. This acquisition positions Virtusa at the forefront of innovation in chip design, enabling clients to accelerate time-to-market for next-generation products.

Voice AI Startup, SuperBryn Secures $1.2M in a Pre-seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital’s CXXO Initiative

Dr. Neethu Mariam Joy (Left) and Nikkitha Shanker (Right)

• With this funding and selection for the Mphasis Sparkle Innovation Program (US) via Nasscom InnoTrek 2025, SuperBryn will fast-track its Evals, Observability & Self-Learning layer to drive the next era of reliable enterprise voice AI.

SuperBryn, the Evals, Observability, and Self-Learning layer for enterprise voice AI, has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Kalaari Capital CXXO Initiative, with participation from angel investors including Rikant Pitti (Co-founder, EaseMyTrip), Arjun Pillai (Founder, Docket AI), Sharath Keshava Narayanan (Founder, Sanas AI), Harish Manian (Group CEO, BMH), and Nivin Pauly (Leading South Indian Actor).

The funding will accelerate product development, expand engineering hiring, and deepen market validation with early enterprise customers across industries where dependable voice automation is now a strategic priority. Voice AI is a $47 billion market growing at 35% annually, but without a robust reliability infrastructure, much of this potential never reaches production, a gap SuperBryn is purpose-built to solve.

Commenting on the Fundraise, Nikkitha Shanker, Co-founder of SuperBryn, said: “Voice agents fail silently. An enterprise might have a million conversations a month, but they have no idea which ones went wrong, why the agent fumbled, or how to fix it without manually reviewing thousands of calls. We're building the layer that surfaces what's breaking, why it's breaking, and automatically makes the agent better, without human intervention. Monitoring and Evals is non-negotiable in industries like healthcare, finance, and insurance, where one failed conversation can mean a missed diagnosis, a compliance violation, or a claim that never gets processed."

Dr. Neethu Mariam Joy, Co-founder of SuperBryn, added: “After 14 years in speech and voice AI research, I’ve seen why voice agents fail in the wild. Most platforms test only for narrow conditions, not for the messy reality of human speech. SuperBryn exists to fix this. We’re building intelligent evaluation and feedback systems that ensure voice agents not only work on day one but keep improving every single day.”

Jayraj Bharat Patel, AVP, Kalaari Capital, said: “Voice AI is at an inflection point, enterprises are moving from experimentation to scaled deployment, but reliability remains the biggest bottleneck. SuperBryn will fill a critical missing layer with independent evaluation, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Nikkitha and Neethu have deep technical and 0-to-1 experience, and are extremely passionate about setting the reliability standard for voice AI globally. We are super excited to partner with them on this journey.

SuperBryn was founded nine months ago by Nikkitha Shanker, a second-time founder and NIT Calicut engineer, and Dr. Neethu Mariam Joy, a voice AI researcher with a PhD from IIT Madras and postdoctoral work at King’s College London. Founded by two women technologists from Kerala, SuperBryn emerged from a clear insight, voice agents excel in pilots but fail in production, especially with accents, noisy environments, multi-turn dialogue, and edge cases current platforms miss. Seeing the pattern, they set out to fix it by building the reliability layer that makes enterprise voice AI scalable.

Today, over 70% of pilots fail to reach production due to reliability issues in real-world environments. SuperBryn closes this gap enabling enterprises to move to production 20x faster and 10x cheaper, with early customers seeing resolution rates rise from under 40% to over 80% within 60 days.

These capabilities enable enterprises especially in healthcare, financial services, insurance, and other high-stakes environments to deploy voice AI with confidence and independent verification.From launch, the company is targeting global customers, with a strong early emphasis on the US market. SuperBryn’s selection as one of five startups for Nasscom's InnoTrek USA 2025 and its induction into the Mphasis Sparkle Innovation Program USA provide it with direct access to global enterprise clients, and the company is already working with US-based customers. SuperBryn’s long-term vision is to become the independent watchdog and reliability standard for enterprise AI agents, ensuring that voice AI systems meet the same monitoring, compliance, and reliability expectations as modern cloud infrastructure.

Plant-Based Brand Earthful Secures ₹26 Crore Led by Fireside & V3 Ventures

Earthful, a clean-label plant-based nutrition brand, has raised INR 26 Crore in its Pre-Series A funding round led by Fireside Ventures and V3 Ventures. Atrium Angels also participated in the round, reflecting strong investor confidence in Earthful’s fast-growing presence in the nutrition category and its long-term market potential.

Founded by sisters and IIT alumni Veda Gogineni and Sudha Gogineni, Earthful is building natural solutions designed to make nutrition less intimidating, with a strong focus on menopausal women’s health needs. They are the first Indian brand to make multivitamins customised for menopausal women combining vitamins, minerals, and herbs. They have also innovated in the fast - growing protein category with only 6-7 ingredients from only plants.

In the last two years, Earthful has built a customer base of over 2 lakh consumers, driven by strong repeat purchases and growing trust in its approach of the “Nothing but Nature” philosophy. Today, its portfolio includes daily multivitamins formulated to bridge nutrition gaps across age groups, multi-flavoured Plant Protein, along with targeted solutions for Skin, Hair, and Sleep.

The funds raised will help Earthful deepen its product portfolio for women’s health, along with team expansion in Hyderabad and Mumbai to support its next phase of growth.

Commenting on the fundraise, Veda Gogineni, Co founder, Earthful, says, “Sudha and I started Earthful to challenge the unclean nutrition industry which was harming consumers rather than doing good. With this investment, we want to expand our portfolio, grow deeper into Bharat and build a movement where people know that their nutrition shouldn’t be intimidating, and should have nothing, but nature in it!”

Arjun Vaidya, Co-founder, V3 ventures said, "I’ve known Earthful’s story since 2021. I believe India is going through an important moment in preventive supplements, and what drew us to Earthful was their pursuit of honest nutrition - simple labels, transparent formulations, and a mission rooted in Nothing but Nature. Customers are looking for this now. We also appreciated their focused commitment to women’s wellness. My mother has been a customer of their plant protein for years because she felt it truly spoke to her needs. We’re very excited about Veda and Sudha’s clarity of vision and where this journey goes from here."

Meanwhile, Ankur Khaitan, Principal, Fireside Ventures further commented, “At Fireside, women’s health has been a core focus of our investment thesis and menopause is one of the fastest growing white spaces in this category. Earthful embodies this opportunity with Veda and Sudha’s deep consumer insight and authentic vision to redefine how women experience this journey. We are thrilled to partner with them on their mission to bring care and confidence to millions of women.”

Earthful, previously featured on Shark Tank, and raised USD 1 million from marquee angels and family offices. The brand has grown over 3X in the last financial year, driven primarily by repeat purchases and strong word of mouth.

About Earthful

Earthful is all about clean, plant-based nutrition that comes only from nature and everyone can trust. Every product is made with ingredients you know and can understand upon reading the label. No complicated additives or artificial junk. We believe in transparency and educating people about what truly defines clean nutrition. We were also the first ones to create an all-natural Multivitamin, specifically for menopausal women. Our mission is to ensure that nutrition comes from nothing but nature and is no longer intimidating for people!