Semiconductor veteran Raja Manickam eyes power electronics market with his startup

CHENNAI: Long-time semiconductor industry professional and former chief executive of Tata Electronics (OSAT unit) Raja Manickam has founded a fabless chip startup, iVP Semiconductor, targeting the domestic power electronics, renewable energy, electric vehicle charging and battery management market in the country.

The company plans to open a 20,000-square-foot common chip and module testing facility in Chennai with partnership from Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), which could be used by other semiconductor firms.

Announcing the launch, iVP semiconductor said it has an in-house design centre in Chennai and also has agreements for intellectual property from Taiwanese, US and Japanese players.

It plans to open another design and testing center in the country to scale up.

Senior business executives and union IT secretary S Krishnan, TIDCO MD Sandeep Nanduri, industries secretary V Arun Roy, Guidance MD Vishnu were present at the event.

The bootstrapped startup has so far raised around $5 million (approx. Rs 41 crore) from friends and aims at generating $70 million to $100 million in the next three years. The company aims at expanding into IoT devices and industrial applications and customizing its chip offerings.

Manickam said the cost and geographic advantage would help them to tap Indian customers. He didn’t reveal the volume target but said roughly the company needs to sell 1.2 million units a day to reach the $100 million turnover.

He said the common production testing facility would require an investment of about $6 million and reduce the time to market and make it more reliable.


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