India-made 40nm chip to power smart meters by June

The system-on-chip (SoC) was created over a two-year investment. ₹150 crore based in Hyderabad, Cyient-backed semiconductor design startup Azimuth AI is touted as one of the first custom-designed and commercialized SoCs to commercially power industrial applications and devices. An SoC contains all the necessary components of an electronic processing system in a single chip.

“While it is difficult to precisely quantify value add, we expect 20-30% local value add from the chipset for the customers we sell to,” said Sridevi Badiga, co-founder and chief growth officer at Azimuth. Mint in an interaction.

While the SoC is ready for production, Azimuth and Cyient are conducting final technical evaluation steps to integrate their chips. smart meters. Badiga said deployment will begin as early as June 2026.

Cyient said in a post on March 24 that the company is targeting the global smart meter market worth $29 billion.

Cyient has joined Mindgrove Technologies, a startup based at IIT Madras, to develop Indian patented industrial SoCs for industrial applications. Their efforts are in line with the government’s efforts to manufacture chips locally and develop a relevant ecosystem to counter global supply chain shocks and become self-sufficient in technology.

“There will be more opportunities like this. The goal is that once a chipset is patented, about 70% of that design and patent will be reusable in a modified SoC that will appeal to another industry,” said Krishna Bodanapu, vice president and general manager of Cyient. “While we are starting with a chipset for smart meters, we will also venture into other verticals such as power, space and battery management services that ensure these critical operations do not have backdoors that can create security issues.”

Cyient acquired a 27.3% stake in Azimuth AI for $7.5 million ( ₹66 crore) in October last year. On April 8, it announced the formation of Cyient Semiconductor, a wholly owned subsidiary.

At that time, the company announced that it was targeting the global semiconductor market, which is projected to generate $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2032.

“We currently have 600 special teams. semiconductor engineers and designers, 200 of whom are based abroad. “Our goal is to create a portfolio of locally designed and owned chips that can then be sold in various markets,” Bodanapu told Mint.

Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a press conference earlier on Monday that 30 more chips like Azimuth’s will come from Indian companies.

However, Bodanapu clarified that the smart meter chip was developed without government design or manufacturing incentives. “We are in talks with the Center to understand what support we can get from them but for now there was no government scheme subsidy for this.”

SoCs, which feature multiple chips on a printed circuit board (PCB), are often used as a compact processing module in a variety of consumer and commercial electronics applications. On April 16, Mint reported that the Center was considering a $4 billion incentive package to develop electronic components, semiconductor design and other related fields. On May 1, the government launched a $2.7 billion stimulus plan to boost domestic electronic component production.

But semiconductor design and components are still awaiting their own plans. On August 23, Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity) secretary S Krishnan said that the Center is assessing the scale of chip design incentives to be included in the yet-to-be-announced second tranche of the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM).