India Tech Report: In Conversation

My guest in today’s episode is GS Madhusudan, Co-Founder and CEO of Incore Semiconductors, a company at the forefront of processor IP innovation in India. With nearly four decades of experience in the technology sector, Madhusudan has played a significant role in shaping India's semiconductor landscape.

Before co-founding Incore in 2018, he managed the Shakti processor project at IIT Madras, which helped build foundational expertise for commercial processor design in the country.

Incore Semiconductors, incubated at the institute, emerged from this ecosystem, focusing on RISC-V architecture to offer customisable processor IP for applications ranging from consumer electronics to automotive and industrial settings.

Under Madhusudan's leadership, Incore is combining technical advancement with practical business strategies, offering solutions for secure, fault-tolerant, and AI-optimised processors. The company has developed a flexible SOC generator platform and collaborates with multiple foundries, supporting customers from IP licensing to product tape-out.

Incore is backed by the well-known VC firm Peak XV Partners.

Madhusudan remains an active advisor to government agencies. He emphasises the importance of talent development, marketing and product management, and practical deployment in India's quest for a stronger presence in the global semiconductor market.

Some chapters

(00:00) Building India's Semiconductor Industry

(03:04) The Shakti Project and InCore's Foundation

(06:09) Understanding RISC-V Architecture

(08:54) Evolving Beyond Proprietary Processes

(11:46) The Role of Marketing and Product Management

(14:43) India's Semiconductor Opportunities

(18:07) Challenges in the Semiconductor Market

(20:52) The Importance of Talent Development

(23:59) Future Prospects for Indian Semiconductor Startups

(27:03) Navigating the Chip Business Landscape

(29:44) Advice for Aspiring Semiconductor Professionals

Coming up, in the next episode of In Conversation, G S Madhusudan, Co-Founder and CEO of InCore Semiconductors, gives us a sense of how far India's chip ecosystem has come, and how quickly it's evolving. Catch the full conversation on Friday, Aug. 22nd, right here or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a one-minute preview.

In this episode, I’m joined by Abhijit Bhutey and Vishal Reddy, co-founders of Inbound Aerospace, a startup incubated at IIT Madras. The discussion covers the origins of their journey—from an academic collaboration focused on microgravity research to building a company designed for commercial space experimentation.

They started simply with how the idea came to Arvind IB, their fellow founder, when as a PhD student at IIT Madras, he was exploring microgravity through drop tower experiments. The idea became a startup when Aravind was joined by Vishal, whose background includes graduate studies in the United States, and Abhijit, a former pilot with the Indian Navy who aspired to space entrepreneurship.

In this conversation they explain the challenges and opportunities in creating usable microgravity platforms, detailing Inbound Aerospace’s mission to develop a reusable spacecraft that will carry research projects to low earth orbit and bring experiments back safely to earth.

Abhijit and Vishal give us insights into microgravity's usefulness in biotech, materials science, and semiconductors, and explain how their vehicle is being designed for efficient re-entry and autonomous landing. The founders also share early milestones, including team building, subsystem testing, and initial funding, and reflect on broader trends and gaps in the Indian space-tech ecosystem.

Coming up on Aug. 14: Why are SpaceTech startups working to build various microgravity platforms and solutions catching the attention of investors?
In this exciting field of science and engineering, experts see many possibilities: from drug discovery and better medicines to 3D-printed life-saving organ replacements to ultra-efficient semiconductors.

In my next episode of IndiaTechReport: In Conversation, I catch up with Abhijit Bhutey and Vishal Reddy, co-founders at Inbound Aerospace along with ARAVIND I B, whose idea has become this venture.

Backed by investors including Speciale Invest, and incubated at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, this trio is developing an unmanned automated reusable platform for microgravity experiments in hashtag#AdvancedManufacturing.
Another fine example of an attempt to contribute to hashtag#AatmanirbharBharat in a strategic tech domain, and I'm happy to bring you this conversation ahead of Independence Day. here's a 2-minute preview.

In today’s episode, Rishabh Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of PeerRobotics, gives us a sense of how automation is changing for small and mid-sized manufacturers and outlines his vision for collaborative robotics. Rishabh shares his experience and perspective on the factory floor transition to advanced robotics.

With a background in manufacturing and technical training from IIT Delhi and the University of Maryland, Agarwal built PeerRobotics with the aim of simplifying human-robot interaction and making automation intuitive for even non-technical users. The six-year-old company’s systems are designed for practical deployment in diverse industrial settings, where robots learn routes through human demonstration and adapt to existing workflows.

Agarwal also describes how PeerRobotics approaches product development, aiming to own the whole stack. The company takes advantage of doing much of its engineering and development at its centres in India, while also tapping advanced R&D experience in the US in certain areas like computer vision.

My guest in today’s episode is Arpit Agarwal, a partner at Blume Ventures, one of India’s best known early-stage sector-agnostic VC firms with a solid track record of backing what Arpit describes as frontier technologies.

In this episode, we discuss the challenges and advantages of building and scaling deep science and technology-based companies out of India. Arpit delves into his experience navigating the cycles of venture capital, the gradual shift to larger fund sizes at Blume, and the fundamentals that guide investment decisions.

He also comments on international dynamics, including the movement of talent and capital in the context of AI being widely seen as the biggest opportunity for founders and investors alike. He weighs in on the shifting balance between hardware and software within India’s deep tech scene and identifies some of the most interesting investment themes.

As Blume prepares to move into its fifth fund, Arpit is also happy to debate why sector-agnostic funds may be better placed to invest in deep tech.

My guests today are Murari Ramkumar and Dr. Nagesh Kini, founders of Vimano, a deep-tech startup headquartered in Bengaluru, India, specializing in advanced nanotechnology and materials science.

The company focuses on developing ion-conductive membranes that are critical components for energy transition applications, including Redox flow batteries, electrolyzers for green hydrogen production and Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells.

These technologies are essential for enabling cost-effective, long-duration energy storage and supporting the global shift toward renewable energy systems.

In this conversation, Murari and Dr. Nagesh give us a glimpse into their journey that started with a chance encounter at Thermax and has grown to a venture-funded membrane technologies startup, with early customers including the Indian Space Research Organisation. They are now backed by early-stage deep science and tech focused investor Ankur Capital, a VC firm that’s among the leaders in backing founders in India in sectors ranging from agri and biotech to B2B supply chain.

In this episode, the two entrepreneurs also delve into some of the technical and entrepreneurial hurdles of building a deep-tech startup in India, from fashioning their own manufacturing tools to navigating the funding landscape and scaling up in a resource-constrained environment. In fact, Murari and Dr. Nagesh bootstrapped Vimano for five years before Ankur Capital led their first institutional funding round.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a scientist, or simply curious about the future of deep tech in India, in this episode we offer a glimpse into a journey of turning lab-scale innovation into globally relevant products and solutions.

My guest today is Kunal Khattar, founding managing partner at AdvantEdge Founders, an early-stage VC firm in New Delhi that’s well known for backing founders in the EV and mobility sectors in India. Kunal is well known for backing both consumer facing shared mobility ventures like Rapido and technology-led product innovation startups like Exponent Energy, which is a leader in fast-charging tech in India.

It's now 10 years since AdvantEdge was founded, Kunal says, and the firm is very close to announcing the first close of its third fund, which will likely be in the ballpark of $75 million, to back the next generation of EV entrepreneurs in India.

In this conversation, Kunal talks about why he expects the EV space to hit the J-curve growth stage over the next three to five years and how replacing the overall ICE economy in India is a trillion-dollar opportunity.

Kunal also talks about how because technology-led industry shifts can take decades, some promising technologies, like green hydrogen, for example, will take time to become mainstream.

My guest today is Saurabh Chandra, co-founder and CEO of Ati Motors, an autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) venture in Bengaluru. In this conversation, Saurabh talks about how the robots are coming – changing the industrial manufacturing landscape forever.

He talks about Ati’s own family of robots, named Sherpa, some early engineering decisions that have stood the company in good stead, and how Ati can go from shipping hundreds of robots to thousands, and more. We also briefly touched upon lessons from building a deep tech robotics company out of India. 

Under Chandra’s leadership, Ati Motors has become a pioneer in developing AMRs for material movement in factories and warehouses. Unlike traditional automated guided vehicles (AGVs), Ati’s Sherpa robots are engineered to perform in the most challenging industrial environments — handling gradients, potholes, clutter, and even outdoor conditions.

This is made possible by a full-stack, first-principles approach and the use of advanced 3D LiDAR-based navigation, which allows Sherpa robots, today best known for their tugging capabilities, to operate without any external markers, reflectors, or teleoperation. All autonomy is processed onboard, ensuring robust performance even in environments with unreliable connectivity.

Ati’s current portfolio of AMRs include the Sherpa Tug, Sherpa Lifter, Sherpa Pallet Mover, and Sherpa Pivot. The company has some 50 customers in India, Southeast Asia and North America, Chandra says, including names such as Forvia and Hyundai.

On building AMRs out of India, Chandra credits Bengaluru’s multidisciplinary talent pool and thriving manufacturing ecosystem as important advantages that support innovation. The day isn’t that far away when, in factories and warehouses and other such complexes, “whatever moves is going to be autonomous,” he says.

Ati Motors
https://atimotors.com

India Tech Report
https://indiatechreport.in

My guest today is Bhaktha Ram Keshavachar, founder and CEO of Chara Technologies, in Bengaluru. Chara is at the forefront of a technological shift that could reshape for the better India’s electric mobility landscape, and potentially make an impact overseas as well.

The mission is both urgent and ambitious: to build high-performance electric motors that are free of rare earth magnets — a critical component in most electric vehicles and industrial machines today.

Bhaktha and his fellow founders Ravi Prasad, the chief motor designer, and Mahalingam Koushik, the CTO at Chara, are engineering veterans from industry, each one bringing decades of experience to their entrepreneurial journey.

It started in late 2019, just as the world was heading into the uncertainty of the Covid pandemic. Recognizing the strategic and environmental risks posed by global dependence on rare earth minerals — most of which are controlled by a single country — he and his team set out to engineer an alternative.

The result is a new generation of reluctance motors, designed and manufactured in India, that match or surpass the efficiency of traditional permanent-magnet motors, while sidestepping the environmental and geopolitical pitfalls of rare earth mining.

In this conversation, Bhaktha shares the technical and business challenges Chara has overcome — from early R&D pivots and tackling the challenge of torque ripple in reluctance motors, to building a pilot production facility and securing industry partnerships, including a manufacturing and distribution alliance with Greaves Cotton.

He discusses the hurdles of deep tech entrepreneurship in India, the evolving talent landscape, and Chara’s plan to take its products global.

Whether you’re a founder, investor, engineer, or simply curious about the future of cleaner technology, this episode offers an example of how Indian deep tech innovation is rising to meet one of the challenges of our era: building a sustainable, secure, and scalable electric future — one motor at a time.