The story
India imports almost all its semiconductors.
Every smart meter, every car sensor, every satellite subsystem — the tiny chips inside them are usually designed and built abroad. It's one of the country's quietest but biggest dependencies.
Which is why a small company operating out of Greater Noida is worth understanding. It's called VerveSemi Microelectronics, and in early 2026 it pulled in around ₹90 crore from a lineup of serious investors.
So let's break down the whole thing — what VerveSemi actually does, how it makes money, what its financials look like, who just wrote it cheques, and what the company is now worth.
Let's get into it.
Part 1: The business model — what does VerveSemi actually do?
VerveSemi designs semiconductors — the tiny chips that run everything from your electricity meter to spacecraft.
But here's the important part: it doesn't manufacture anything.
It's a fabless company. It designs the chip — the architecture, the blueprint, the intellectual property — and then hands that design to a giant factory (a "fab") in Taiwan or Korea to physically produce it.
Think of it like an architect who designs a stunning building but never lays a single brick. The value isn't in the bricks. It's in the blueprint.
And in the chip world, that blueprint is where the money is — design and IP can account for up to half of a chip's entire value, without the crushing multi-billion-dollar cost of owning a factory.
Specifically, VerveSemi works in analog and mixed-signal chips. Without getting too technical: analog chips are the ones that deal with the real, physical world — measuring temperature, pressure, weight, sound, electrical current — and translating it into signals a digital system can use. It's a notoriously hard, specialised field with far fewer players than the digital chip world.
The founders are two ex-STMicroelectronics veterans — Rakesh Malik (CEO) and Pratap Narayan Singh (CTO) — who started the company in 2017. The name is a mash-up of Verve (life) and semi (semiconductor).
Today the company holds 110+ IP blocks and 25 chip families, and has built chips for the likes of ISRO. Its designs end up in:
→ Smart meters and energy systems
→ Weighing scales and industrial instruments
→ Avionics and space systems
→ Defence electronics
→ 5G and Wi-Fi gear
→ Motor control and automotive systems
And these aren't just Indian customers — VerveSemi ships its IP to clients across Europe, Japan, and the US, making it one of the rare Indian chip startups that actually exports intellectual property.
Part 2: The revenue model — how does it make money?
A fabless company like VerveSemi earns in three main ways:
1. Licensing its IP.
Remember those 110+ IP blocks? VerveSemi licenses these design building-blocks to other chip companies — who pay an upfront license fee, and often a royalty on every chip they sell using that IP. This is the high-margin, scalable core of the business: design once, license many times.
2. Custom chip design services.
Companies come to VerveSemi and say "design us a chip that does X." VerveSemi builds it and charges engineering/design fees. This keeps the cash flowing while IP royalties build up.
3. Selling its own chips.
VerveSemi also has its own standard products — like a high-precision, ultra-low-power analog front-end chip — which it sells as physical silicon once production scales up.
The company describes its current phase as moving "from validation to velocity." In plain terms: it has proven the designs work, and is now shifting toward volume production, expected around 2026-2027. That's when the real revenue scale-up is meant to happen.
Part 3: The financials — show me the numbers
Here's how VerveSemi has performed over the last five years (all figures in ₹ crore):
Metric | FY21 | FY22 | FY23 | FY24 | FY25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 5.70 | 6.67 | 8.05 | 14.67 | 13.70 |
| EBITDA (Operating Profit) | 0.57 | 0.91 | 0.58 | 6.30 | 2.24 |
| PAT (Net Profit) | 0.39 | 0.12 | 0.32 | 5.06 | 3.39 |
A few things jump out:
→ Revenue grew strongly — nearly tripling from ₹5.7 crore to a peak of ₹14.67 crore in FY24 (a ~78% jump in that one year), before dipping slightly to ₹13.70 crore in FY25.
→ FY24 was a standout year — profits spiked, with EBITDA margins hitting 43%. FY25 normalised back down, which is common for a company whose revenue swings with big design contracts and product cycles.
→ The company is essentially debt-free, with negligible finance costs — exactly what you'd expect from a low-capex, fabless model. It doesn't need to borrow heavily because it isn't building factories.
So the picture is: a small but real, growing, profitable, debt-free deep-tech business. Not a cash-burning rocketship — a genuine engineering company that happens to be young.
Part 4: The fundraise — who put in the money?
In early 2026, VerveSemi raised a fresh funding round — reported as a ~$10 million raise.
And the investor lineup is what makes it interesting. This wasn't random money; it was a who's-who of names that know deep-tech and Indian markets:
→ Ashish Kacholia — one of India's most respected ace investors, known for spotting quality small-caps and emerging businesses early. His backing carries real signalling weight.
→ Unicorn India Ventures — a well-known early-stage VC firm, co-leading the round.
→ Roots Ventures
→ Caperize Fina
→ MAIQ Growth Scheme
→ And a broad set of other funds, family offices, and investment entities — the allotment records show around 30 participants in total, including names like Unicorn India Ventures Fund III, Strategic Sixth Sense Capital Fund, Subhkam Ventures, and others.
Mechanically, here's what happened: VerveSemi issued 2,589 brand-new shares at ₹3,49,651 per share, raising roughly ₹90.5 crore in total.
The fact that marquee investors like Kacholia showed up — and the round was reportedly oversubscribed — tells you the smart money sees something real here.
Part 5: The valuation — what is VerveSemi worth?
The market valuation (what investors paid):
VerveSemi had 10,168 shares before the round. Add the 2,589 new ones, and you get 12,757 shares in total.
Multiply by the price investors paid:
12,757 × ₹3,49,651 ≈ ₹446 crore.
That's the post-money valuation — the company's worth right after the raise. For a company with ~₹14 crore revenue, that's a rich multiple — but it's a considered bet on VerveSemi's moat, its export IP, its experienced founders, and the enormous tailwind of India's semiconductor push.
Part 6: The tailwind — why now?
One big reason investors are betting on VerveSemi: timing.
Just this month — 15 July 2026 — the government approved Semicon 2.0, a massive ₹1,27,500 crore plan to build India's chip ecosystem. And crucially, this version pours money specifically into chip design — VerveSemi's exact game.
VerveSemi is already one of just 24 companies selected under the government's Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme, which gives it:
→ Up to 50% of design costs reimbursed (capped at ₹15 crore)
→ A 4-6% incentive on sales for five years once chips ship (capped at ₹30 crore)
→ Subsidised access to expensive design tools
When the government is actively de-risking your costs and rewarding your sales, your future cash flows look a lot healthier — and that's a big part of what investors are pricing in.
The bottom line
VerveSemi is a rare thing in India: a genuine, IP-owning, export-generating semiconductor design company — not a reseller, not an assembler, but an actual chip designer.
The business model is smart (design, don't manufacture). The revenue model is scalable (license IP many times over). The financials are small but real, growing, and debt-free. The fundraise attracted marquee, credible investors. And it's riding one of the biggest policy tailwinds India has ever thrown at a single sector.
At ~₹446 crore, investors are clearly betting on what it becomes, not what it earns today. Whether that bet pays off depends on one thing: can VerveSemi convert its impressive IP and its 2026-27 production ramp into serious, scaled revenue?
If it does, this ₹90 crore round will look like a bargain.
In short
→ Business: A fabless analog/mixed-signal chip designer from Greater Noida — designs chips, outsources manufacturing.
→ Revenue: Licenses IP (+ royalties), does custom design work, and sells its own chips. Volume production expected 2026-27.
→ Financials: Revenue peaked at ₹14.67 crore (FY24); profitable and essentially debt-free.
→ Fundraise: ~$10M / ₹90.5 crore round, led by Ashish Kacholia and Unicorn India Ventures, with ~30 participants.
→ Valuation: ~₹446 crore market valuation (₹3,49,651/share).
→ Tailwind: One of 24 DLI-approved firms, riding India's ₹1.27 lakh crore Semicon 2.0 wave.
This is an informational explainer, not investment advice. Figures are drawn from VerveSemi's registered-valuer report, its share-allotment records, its FY21-FY25 financials, and public reporting.