Make in India

Unlike simpler medical devices that can be assembled from imported components, an MRI scanner requires expertise across superconducting magnets, radio-frequency engineering, gradient coils, image reconstruction, signal processing, embedded electronics, patient-handling systems and clinical software.

Founded in 2010 by semiconductor engineer Himamshu Khasnis and a team of experienced professionals, Signalchip operates as a fabless semiconductor company. It designs the architecture, intellectual property and circuitry of its chips in India while relying on specialised semiconductor foundries for physical fabrication. The company focuses primarily on high-speed wireless technologies such as 3G-WCDMA, 4G-LTE, 5G New Radio and software-defined radio systems.

Chennai-based Mindgrove Technologies is working to change this imbalance. The IIT Madras-incubated fabless semiconductor company designs indigenous system-on-chips for embedded equipment, connected devices, industrial automation and edge-computing applications.

Its most distinctive project is JAL, a microwave-plasma thruster that uses water as its propellant. Instead of carrying highly toxic chemicals or relying entirely on expensive noble gases, the system is designed to convert water into an electrically energised plasma and expel it at high velocity to manoeuvre a spacecraft.

Its modular approach allows customers to select a standard satellite bus, integrate a mission-specific payload, obtain launch and separation hardware, and operate the spacecraft through Dhruva Space’s ground network. This reduces the engineering effort required to build every mission around a new spacecraft architecture.