In today’s episode, Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO at HrdWyr, a semiconductor design startup in Bengaluru, talks about the company’s plans after recently raising $13 million in Series A funding, in an investment led by Ideaspring Capital.The company was co-founded in 2023 by Siva and Ganesh Guruswamy, both industry veterans spanning companies including Intel, AMD, Sandisk and Motorola.In this conversation, Siva talks about how the era of custom silicon is upon us and what the AI-led opportunity represents. The company specialises in System-on-Chip (AISoC) designs tailored for edge computing and applications like electric vehicles and industrial equipment.HrdWyr’s first product, named Indus 1011, is expected to hit the market by the end of this year, Siva says. In August last year, the company had announced it had picked Tata Electronics as the packaging partner and also that Indian consumer electronics company boAt would be an anchor customer for the chip — a small, but historic milestone for India's semiconductor aspirations.boAt is to use this chip, which offers power management as a core feature, in its truly wireless earbuds charging case.As many of you know, startups such as HrdWyr are getting funded in the time of a broader national push in India for semiconductor self-reliance, supported by significant government investment. Siva notes, however, that significant challenges remain, such as the lack of timely and adequate funding at critical stages.Still, he thinks that the only way forward is to look at the aggregate of all the ongoing efforts — from startups such as HrdWyr to conglomerates like Tata setting up foundries and OSATs — as an opportunity to tap a trillion-dollar sector, and, as a nation building mission.
