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Qualcomm India’s Qualcomm Semiconductor Mentorship Program aims to mentor semiconductor startups through their design phase towards commercialisation.

Initiated in 2016, this year marks the sixth consecutive year of the program. Announced in April this year, in collaboration with the Center for development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which is an autonomous scientific society of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, (MeitY), Qualcomm announced its first cohort for Qualcomm SMP 2022, featuring four semiconductor startups, who will start receiving mentorship, technical training, and industry outreach support from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Here, Rajen Vagadia, Vice President, Qualcomm India Private Limited and President, Qualcomm India, added, “As the 5G ecosystem and use cases for consumers and industries evolve, semiconductors remain crucial for ensuring sustained growth and innovation in the technology sector. There is an immense opportunity within India’s vibrant startup ecosystem, backed by recent government policies and programs. The Qualcomm Semiconductor Mentorship Program is yet another step supporting India’s progression as a strong design start-up hub. Each start-up selected for this program has the potential to bring about a large-scale positive change in semiconductor technology, and we are proud to help them along in their journey.”

E. Magesh, Director General of C-DAC, also said, “Start-ups have helped in putting India at the very forefront of technology innovation for the world. The government, cognizant of its potential, is supporting its growth with well-directed policies and strategies and a newfound focus on the semiconductor space. We look forward to working with Qualcomm to give semiconductor start-ups the kind of technical support, mentoring, and industry exposure they need.”

Qualcomm SMP is the latest inclusion to Qualcomm’s list of innovations that strives to work towards encouraging technical advancements, intellectual property-driven innovation, and product development for semiconductor design in India. Under Qualcomm SMP, the selected startups will be entitled for gaining access to domain experts, VCs, accelerators, incubators, industry associations, and other companies aiding in scaling up their businesses.

The first cohort for Qualcomm SMP 2022 featuring the four startups is:

1. Pantherun Technologies- Known for building an AI-based data protection approach that encrypts in real-time, to make encryption ubiquitous, Pantherun is a cybersecurity innovator with a patent-pending approach to data protection, making breach of security 10X harder compared to existing global solutions.

2. Simyog Technology- Simyog’s mission is to enable “Agile for Hardware Design”. It is also known for working through its virtual EMI/EMC Laboratory, for predicting Radiated Emissions (RE), Conducted Emissions (CE), Radiated Susceptibility (RS), and Conducted Susceptibility (CS) compliance tests.

3. FermionIC Design- FermionIC Design is a fabless semiconductor company specialising in high-speed SERDES and PLLs, known for delivering IC Solutions from concept to success, and creating multi-protocol Re-Timers for PCIe 5.0 and USB4.

4. Powency Circuit- A company focussed on semiconductor products for small-scale power-related applications with better efficiency, Powency deals in MEMS microphone products with innovative signal processing to improve the signal to noise ratio and reduce harmonic distortion.

Qualcomm India will shortlist Indian semiconductor startups for Qualcomm SMP 2022, where each shortlisted startup will be paired with a Qualcomm India leader for mentorship on product planning and development. With that, Qualcomm India will also facilitate “Masterclass” workshops for the shortlisted startups on semiconductor design aspects such as design, testing, and verification packaging, and also on non-technical topics such as pitches, IPR, marketing, government incentives/opportunities, and scaling up teams. C-DAC along with Qualcomm India will also help facilitate exposure for these startups to government stakeholders through meetings, webinars, seminars, or tradeshows.