California headquartered VC firm Walden International is launching a specialised fund of US$100 million (Rs. 612 crores) to invest in semiconductor startups in India and startups which make softwares for semiconductor chips. As per report by ET the fund will begin investing later this year and has already identified four startups, two each in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The VC firm has not though, the names of chosen startups, but as per IndianWeb2 speculations it has to be iWave or Saankhya Labs as far as semiconductor startups from Bangalore is concerned. Walden will invest around $2 million each in semiconductor startups
Lip Bu Tan, chairman and co-founder of Walden International said - "We are looking for companies which have innovative solutions to offer in the low power consumption space. There are strong laws to protect such IP in India."
Walden International has previously invested in Indian companies like E4E and Quatrro BPO.
Funding for Semiconductor startups in India is not as easy as for other tech startups in India, for couple of years only few companies managed to get fundings. Recently only Tejas Networks and Cosmic Circuits have successfully raised capital. Tejas Networks raised angel funding of $5 million and later received around $ 73 million (. 445 crore) in risk funding from global investors such as Goldman Sachs, Battery Ventures, Sandstone and Intel Capital.
Apart from these only funding for any semiconductor startup was back in 2009 when Bangalore's Ojas Venture Partners has made an investment in city-based Arigami Semiconductor Systems, which is coming up with techniques and intellectual property (IP) to enable digital chip designers to build more efficient datapath intensive digital designs and takes inspiration from Vedic mathematics.
Moreover on a positive side, the central government of India has also announced new initiatives for the semiconductor industry. Last week, the government invited global firms to set up chip fabrication units in the country and said it would reimburse a quarter of the capital expenditure incurred to set up such units.
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