How boAt Convinced Ideaspring to Back Indian Chips Startup With $13 Mn

India’s semiconductor ecosystem is seeing a flurry of investment activity, with startups raising $92 million in the first five months of 2026 across 12 deals, according to data from Venture Intelligence. Among them is Benga​​luru-based HrdWyr, which grabbed $13 million in a Series A round last month led by Ideaspring Capital, with participation from Singularity AMC, Avatar Growth Capital, and existing investor Persistent Systems.

For Ideaspring, however, the decision was less about funding another AI startup and more about backing what it believes could become the next layer of the AI stack.

Founded in 2023, HrdWyr is building AI-native semiconductor chips for edge computing applications, targeting sectors such as consumer electronics, industrial systems, EVs, and data centres. The company plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate development of its AI-native System-on-Chip products and expand customer engagements globally.

The investment comes at a time when global investors are increasingly turning their attention toward AI infrastructure and semiconductor companies, particularly as AI workloads move beyond data centres and into physical devices. According to a recent Deloitte report, the global semiconductor industry is expected to reach $975 billion in annual sales by the end of this year, with high-value AI chips driving roughly half of total revenue despite representing less than 0.2% of the total unit volume.

For India, such a chip dependence is both an opportunity and a strategic vulnerability. India currently imports nearly 90–95% of its semiconductor requirements, according to a recent roadmap report released by NITI Aayog. The report warned that domestic demand for semiconductors could exceed $200 billion by 2035.

The Investment Thesis

For Ideaspring founder and managing partner Naganand Doraswamy, the decision started with the founders. "To us, it always starts with the founders," Doraswamy tells AIM.

In semiconductor startups, founder pedigree often matters more than in traditional software ventures because the cost of mistakes is significantly higher. Unlike software products, where updates can be pushed quickly, semiconductor design cycles stretch across years and require millions of dollars before a product reaches customers.

"Both Shiva and Ganesh come with 30-plus years of very strong background in the semiconductor industry," Doraswamy notes.

HrdWyr was founded by semiconductor veterans Shiva Ramamurthy and Ganesh Guruswamy, who have worked across companies including Intel, AMD, Motorola, SanDisk, and ISRO-linked ecosystems.

Ideaspring Capital invest across AI, deeptech, climate tech, defence, and other sectors. It had been actively looking for semiconductor investments and had developed a clear framework for evaluating opportunities. The firm wanted to back startups building both analogue and digital capabilities, targeting real Indian market opportunities, and most importantly, had a customer or design partner lined up.

That requirement turned out to be critical. "Very rarely do you come across a startup in India that already has a design partner," Doraswamy says.

In HrdWyr's case, consumer electronics brand boAt had been collaborating with the startup for its Indus family of chips in premium wireless audio products, providing an early validation pathway for the technology. The Indus 1011 chip features advanced battery management for wearable devices. The assembly, packaging, and testing is supported by Tata Electronics.

“We’ve always supported the Make in India initiative. By being among the first to work with a homegrown chip design company, we’re proving that real product innovation can start right here in India—at the silicon level,” Sameer Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of boAt, had said in a statement when announcing the collaboration in September last year.

The partnership reduced one of the biggest risks associated with semiconductor startups: building a technically impressive chip without a market willing to adopt it.

For Doraswamy, another factor was HrdWyr's decision to start with high-volume markets instead of chasing cutting-edge premium processors that require significantly larger capital investments. "We really wanted to build something for the Indian market first," he adds.

The startup’s initial focus is on chips that can be deployed across white goods, power management systems, consumer electronics, and industrial devices, where deployment volumes can run into millions of units.

This market strategy hinges on a larger technological shift.  

The AI Factor

For decades, computing systems largely followed traditional processor architectures designed around centralised computing models. AI is now pushing the industry toward new architectures optimised for handling large amounts of data closer to where it is generated.

HrdWyr Co-founder and CEO Ramamurthy “Siva” Sivakumar believes the semiconductor industry is entering a structural shift driven by AI. "The first generation of AI happened in the cloud. The second generation of AI is happening at the edge," Siva tells AIM.

That shift is creating opportunities for a new generation of specialised chips. Rather than sending every request to a cloud server, edge AI systems process information directly on devices such as wearables, vehicles, industrial machines, cameras, and appliances. This reduces latency, improves efficiency, and allows systems to respond in real time.

Siva believes the next evolution goes even further. "We are at the point of takeoff of physical AI," he adds.

Physical AI systems do not merely generate responses but trigger actions in the physical world, such as in autonomous vehicles, industrial robots, smart manufacturing systems, intelligent appliances, and connected infrastructure.

Ideaspring sees that transition as one of the biggest AI opportunities.

"I think the next area is physical AI that everybody is looking at," Doraswamy affirms. "There's a lot of focus now in manufacturing, robotics, and autonomous systems."

Still, both founder and investor acknowledge that deeptech investing comes with longer timelines than traditional SaaS businesses. "Semiconductor companies take three to four years before you see the light of day," Doraswamy notes.

Moreover, deeptech investments take longer to mature, with an average of 25–40% more time between funding each stage, from seed capital through Series D, per BCG.

That reality is one reason VC firms have historically been cautious about semiconductor investments in India. Deeptech startups require patient capital, longer product cycles, and greater technical risk tolerance.

That gap is now closing. The rise of AI infrastructure, government-backed semiconductor initiatives, and growing demand for domestic chip capabilities have begun attracting fresh capital into the sector. HrdWyr's funding round is one of several recent signals that investors are increasingly willing to back Indian semiconductor startups beyond the services layer.

For now, HrdWyr's immediate focus remains on getting its first family of chips into customer products and scaling production volumes.

But Ideaspring's bet goes beyond one product cycle. The firm is betting that as AI moves from cloud software into physical systems, a new semiconductor stack will emerge—and Indian startups could play a larger role in building it.