Sharan Srinivas | CTO, Mindgrove Technologies | “You have to be crazy to want to make silicon”| Ep.9

The ecosystem is set up for you to fail safely.

Mm.

Are you willing to accept that failure? Shashwat and I spent about a year just figuring out what to build. You also need support from your PhD guide. Your PhD guide can make and break- make or break your career. That creates a question: Why are all silicon making companies that large? [upbeat music]

Hi, my name is Amrit. We've heard that IIT Madras is the best place to build. [upbeat music] So we've come down to the Sudha and Shankar Innovation Hub. We want to meet some people. These are builders. We want to talk to them about their work, and also ask them, what makes IIT Madras the best place to build? [upbeat music] Hi, welcome to the Best Place to Build podcast. I'm sitting with Sharan. Sharan is the CTO of one of the hottest new startups from IIT Madras, called Mindgrove. They're in the semiconductor space, and we'll learn from him what he does, and about the semiconductor space, and about the build culture at IIT Madras. He's at the center of it all. Hi, Sharan, welcome.

Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure to come back to this space.

Yeah. Um, firstly, congratulations on your funding announcement. It's a big deal, and earlier this year you got the DLI nod also. Can you talk to us about your funding announcement?

Sure. We've, uh... We are actually quite grateful that, um, we've had almost every investor who invested in us in the previous round, doubling down on us. We take that as a sign that what we are- we are moving in the right direction, and we are trying to do the right thing, um, and then as a, as a vote of confidence. In addition, we have two new investors, uh, Rocketship VC and Mela Ventures, who will be, uh, joining the cap table of Mindgrove Technologies after our Series A round. And, um, we have, uh, raised a total of about 8 million US dollars, and that's, that's the capital we have to take things forward. We, we took our seed round with the pitch that we wanted to make a chip. Now, the, the, the, the pitch is, we want to keep making more chips, and we want to sell the ones that, that we have actually made. So that eight, $8 million, uh, in order to get around to do that, and we additionally have, uh, been approved for the DLI scheme, or the Design Linked Incentive scheme, that is offered by the government of India. This is approximately $2 million, INR, uh, 15 crores worth of, uh, uh, incentives if you meet certain milestones, and we have been, quite thankfully, uh, approved for that, so quite chuffed. But looking forward to the, the, the challenges that are almost certainly going to come, come at us, uh, in the process of doing this.

And you also have some really good quality VCs. Uh, Rocketship, of course, IITM alumnus themselves. Um, there's Peak XV, there's Speciale. Speciale being, um, an investor who has repeatedly invested in IIT Madras-based, uh, tech startups. That's amazing. Yeah, and these are brave investors, because some of these will require 10 years, these, these company... Maybe not tech, but maybe, uh, to, uh, sort of pay back.