In an industry where a single silicon error can cost years of work and millions of dollars, building a chip-design company from the ground up is no small feat. Yet, what began in 2019–20 with a 10-member team at BITSILICA has grown into a 650-engineer global operation, working across India, the US, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Founded by Bhaskar Kakani, an alumnus of IIIT-H, with a vision to build a world-class semiconductor e-R&D company, BITSILICA has evolved alongside the industry’s dramatic shift towards AI, advanced computing and next-generation chip architectures. Today, the company is taking on increasingly complex projects while strengthening India’s place in the global semiconductor design ecosystem. In an exclusive conversation with CE, Bhaskar reflects on BITSILICA’s journey, the changing demands of chip design, the AI-led transformation of computing and why India’s next big opportunity could lie in owning more semiconductor IP (intellectual property).
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What was the moment that made you realise this could become much bigger than you imagined?
When we started BITSILICA, our goal was to build a world-class e-R&D services company in the semiconductor space. In doing so, to help support chip design efforts within India as well. We began with a team of just 10 members, only a few months before the 2020 lockdown was announced. Since then, we’ve grown to 650 engineers working across Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the US.
Along the way, we’ve also worked with Government of India semiconductor programmes like ‘Chips to Startup’, where we collaborated with universities to help them build a chip that was showcased by the Prime Minister. We also partnered with the Government of India’s Design Linked Incentive Scheme, where we architected a graphics-chip-based SoC, further building our R&D capabilities.
We started out as a semiconductor chip design R&D company helping global majors build their chips. But in the process, we evolved into a company that could also support India-based design houses and help build India’s own chip design ecosystem. We remain purely focused on chip design.
What do global companies look for in an Indian chip design partner, beyond just technical talent?
Chip design programmes are incredibly complex, and they require a deep mix of talent with strong domain expertise. The design cycle is called ‘tape-out’ — after that, the chip goes to the foundry for manufacturing. The tape-out cycle itself typically spans 18 months. If a bug turns up in the silicon, the entire 18 months of effort — along with $100-200 million in investment — can be lost.
Having a precise focus on technology, along with teams that have the right specialised skills and the ability to scale, is critical. At the start of a programme, a company might need just a handful of experts. But eventually, that core architecture team has to scale up to 100-200 members within a span of just six to nine months.
Bringing that kind of talent on board — and delivering on time, at the quality global design houses expect — is the single biggest challenge in this industry. Many companies struggle to get past this hurdle and end up stuck as 10- or 20-member outfits; there are hundreds of companies like that. Only a handful have scaled past 100, 200, 300, 500, and even 600 people, and gone on to serve customers across borders. That’s what sets BITSILICA apart from other suppliers in this space.
What are the biggest technical bottlenecks in designing a modern semiconductor?
Semiconductor design is heavily dependent on process technology. Today, companies are working at 5nm, 3nm, 2nm, and even 14 angstrom nodes. In just the last five to six years, the technology roadmap has shifted all the way from 7nm to 14 angstrom — so we’re seeing continuous R&D evolution. As an e-R&D partner, we have to keep pace with our customers’ own R&D journey.
Building and maintaining that level of expertise — and continuing to evolve with it — is the most critical and most challenging aspect of silicon design.
How has the shift toward AI workloads changed the kinds of chips your customers are asking you to design now?
Traditionally, CPUs and specialised microprocessors were the mainstream compute devices. Over the last decade, compute has expanded dramatically alongside the rise of artificial intelligence, which demands far greater processing capacity for complex algorithms. As a result, GPUs, graphics stream processors, and AI accelerators have become the new mainstream compute devices — categories that barely existed a couple of decades ago. Traditional processors and microprocessors are now relegated to supporting roles around these accelerators and data centers.
AI chips have become the dominant trend across nearly everything we work on — about 90% of the startups we engage with are building in the AI accelerator space. The AI revolution really rests on three pillars: massive compute capacity from AI chips, massive storage capacity from new memory architectures like High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), and continued advances in AI algorithms themselves. Of these three, compute — the silicon, the AI chipsets — has become the critical pillar.
Most of our customers have shifted their roadmaps away from traditional compute architectures and toward AI architectures, and this is a trend that’s here to stay for the long term. That’s why we’re seeing companies like NVIDIA, Micron, and SK Hynix grow so rapidly. AMD has joined NVIDIA in the GPU space, Intel is repositioning itself in data centers, and Qualcomm — once purely a mobile company — is now making inroads into compute as well. Today, the backbone of compute is the AI accelerator.
What capabilities does India need to develop to move toward owning more IP and architecture, rather than just executing designs for global companies?
Historically, there were real limits on attracting investment capital into semiconductor design in India, largely because it requires architects who command high compensation. Investors have tended to be risk-averse given the scale of investment required. A typical services company might turn a $1-2 million investment into $20-30 million in revenue. Design companies, by contrast, typically need $50-100 million invested over two to three years before meaningful revenue even begins to materialise.
As the semiconductor industry has seen a global boom, and as the Government of India has stepped up support for these kinds of companies, investors have started paying closer attention to this space — and that’s how capital-intensive chip design work is gradually gaining traction.
This remains a highly capital-intensive space with a high risk profile, especially because competing with established IP companies like Synopsys, ARM, and Cadence — whose IP is silicon-proven across billions of devices — is extremely difficult, both because of the capital required and because of how deeply these players have already penetrated the market.
That said, the Government of India is now giving a boost by helping startups identify areas where Indian companies can realistically build and sell chips. For example, the Mavic chip used in Vikram devices, and chips for power meters, which represent significant volume opportunities. These may not be advanced-node chips, but in categories where India still relies heavily on imports, the government is now prioritising India-based designs over established global players. This is opening up more opportunities for companies to move closer to actual chip design and manufacturing, and to move beyond India’s traditional services or GCC-support model.
What’s the roadmap ahead for BITSILICA?
BITSILICA was recently acquired by Quest Global, an international pure-play engineering e-R&D company with a strong footprint in aerospace, defense, and energy and oil and gas. Quest Global began its journey in semiconductors four to five years ago through a series of acquisitions, and today, BITSILICA has become a core partner within their turnkey product offerings. Going forward, we’ll be taking on more complex chipsets for the next generation of technology.
We started out as a resource-augmentation company, gradually took on more project-based work, and have now moved into taking full ownership of projects — evolving from a service provider into a true partner. Today, we’re the number one supplier to Qualcomm, a top supplier to AMD, and a leading e-R&D services supplier to Broadcom, both in India and abroad.
