Including cutting-edge AI and 5G designs, seven advanced chips have been taped out under the DLI scheme, one with TSMC.
Seven advanced chip designs have been successfully fabricated under the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme. The chips, including one based on the 12-nanometre (nm) node, were produced in collaboration with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Among the key players in this breakthrough is Netrasemi Pvt. Ltd., which has developed a machine learning (ML) acceleration chip with programmable hardware infrastructure for use in robots, drones, industrial automation, and video analytics systems. This chip, which delivers 64 TOPS of AI performance on the 12nm TSMC node, has a cost of ₹612.5 million.
Additionally, Netrasemi has developed a high-end Edge-AI SoC with on-chip video analytics and vector processing, with a budget of ₹443 million.
Meanwhile, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw interacted with semiconductor chip design companies approved under the DLI Scheme of the Semicon India Programme in New Delhi on January 27, 2026.
The interaction focused on reviewing progress, understanding design innovations, and reinforcing the Government’s commitment to building a robust, indigenous semiconductor design ecosystem.
The DLI Scheme, introduced in 2022, aims to accelerate domestic chip design capabilities by supporting startups and companies across areas such as SoCs, telecom, power management, AI, and IoT, thereby strengthening India’s self-reliance in critical semiconductor technologies.
Among the companies showcased in the DLI scheme, Saankhya Labs Pvt. Ltd. is contributing a System-on-Chip (SoC) for baseband processing in 5G telecom infrastructure, while Mindgrove Technologies Pvt Ltd has developed a Vision SoC using the Shakti processor for edge computing applications. Calligo Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has developed an SoC with a RISC-V and POSIT coprocessor-based accelerator card, powering its software ecosystem.
The DLI-supported companies are engaged in semiconductor design across a broad range of areas, including indigenous SoCs and ASICs for surveillance, networking, and embedded systems, RISC-V–based processors and accelerators, and AI-enabled, low-power chips for IoT and edge applications.
Their work also covers telecom and wireless chipsets, power management and mixed-signal ICs, and strategic sectors such as automotive, energy, space, and defence.
Advanced EDA tools have been provided to these organisations, leading to approximately 22.5 million tool-hours of usage, with 67,000 students and over 1000 startup engineers actively engaged.
According to an update by MeitY, in academia, 122 designs have been taped out, with 56 chips fabricated at 180nm at SCL, Mohali, while startups have completed 16 tape-outs, resulting in six chips fabricated at advanced foundry nodes. Additionally, 75 patents have been filed by academic institutions and 10 patents by startups.
