Aheesa’s first light: Building India’s semiconductor future

When Aheesa Digital Innovations was founded in 2021, its vision was to “build semiconductor and networking technology in India”. Today, founder and CEO Sridharan Mani sees the company’s journey as part of India’s larger semiconductor story “demonstrating what can be designed and built here for India and the world”.

Aheesa began by addressing gaps in networking silicon and built capabilities across “architecture, hardware design, software and system validation”. Qualification under the Government’s Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme and early institutional backing were important milestones. “Our journey has been closely aligned with the Government’s broader Make in India initiatives and the vision of a Viksit Bharat,” Mani says.

The defining breakthrough was VIHAAN-I, the first in a planned family of SoCs. Meaning “the first light”, it was taped out on Republic Day and achieved first-pass silicon success on Independence Day. “The coincidence of those dates was deeply meaningful,” he says. “Getting working silicon back on the first attempt is what took us from being a design team with a promising architecture to a company with a proven, manufacturable product.”

First-pass success means the chip worked as intended without a re-spin. “Every silicon iteration is capital intense and can add to the overall turnaround time.” The achievement, Mani says, “reflects the depth of the design, verification and validation work done beforehand” and demonstrates that “a complete networking SoC…can be architected, designed and verified in India”.

Aheesa chose GPON and EPON because broadband access is “where a large and still-growing volume of networking silicon is deployed”. India is seeing “a major fibre broadband expansion”, driven by “rising data consumption, digital services and government-backed connectivity programmes”. Yet “most of the silicon going into that infrastructure is imported” — a “strategic dependency indigenous design can address”.

VIHAAN-I is built around C-DAC’s indigenous VEGA processor core, “designed in India, by an Indian institution”. This means the processor is understood and controlled “end to end rather than a licensed black box”, an advantage for “strategic and security-sensitive applications”. Its RISC-V foundation provides an “open, globally accessible ISA”, allowing customisation without being “locked into licensing constraints”.

The challenges were formidable. “High-end semiconductor design talent is scarce in India,” while funding is difficult because of “long development cycles and high upfront costs”. Building a team that could own the flow “from architecture to validation” took “time and conviction”.

DLI support was “a genuine enabler”, helping Aheesa invest in “tools and verification infrastructure at the scale required for first-pass silicon” and build investor credibility. A Rs 20-crore institutional investment followed. Mani says Semicon 2.0, the Rs 1,27,500-crore programme approved in July 2026, makes it viable “to attempt something this capital-intensive from India”.

Aheesa started with just its three co-founders Sridharan Mani, Sukha R. Ghosh, and Anil Raj Thulasi Das. It now has around 40 employees across architecture, RTL and physical design, verification, software and system validation, supported by advisers. Retaining talent comes down to “ownership and meaningful work”. Its planned Chennai design centre will create about 300 jobs.

For Mani, the personal journey involved “long development cycles”, capital-raising pressure and “the ordinary strain of building a deep-tech company from the ground up”. Yet “the hard moments sharpened our resolve rather than shaking it”.

The next step is “comprehensive system validation”, followed by production and commercial launch in early 2027. Aheesa is engaging OEMs, ODMs, system integrators and telecom distributors, while its partnership with Chennai-based Zigma Technologies brings nearly three decades of experience with OEMs, ODMs and government departments.

The Rs 250-crore Chennai semiconductor design, R&D and product engineering centre will support a broader roadmap spanning “broadband, cybersecurity and edge computing”, with potential applications in “automotive, manufacturing and defence, and even education”.

“This is a defining decade for India’s semiconductor story, as we move from technology consumption to technology creation,” Mani says. The ambition is to become “a semiconductor design house with a portfolio of Indian-designed chips serving both domestic and global markets”. “We dream beyond boundaries and want to build strategic technology in India that can ultimately compete internationally.”