This interview features Srinivasa Rao Kakumanu, CEO & MD of MosChip.
About Srinivasa Rao Kakumanu
Mr. Srinivasa Kakumanu, commonly known as “KS,” possesses an extensive professional background spanning over 28 years within the Semiconductor industry. His notable accomplishments include the co-founding of First Pass Semiconductors Pvt Ltd, a prominent VLSI design services organization established in December 2010. Throughout his illustrious career, KS has played a key role in leading numerous ASIC tape-outs across the Communication, Networking, Consumer, and Computing sectors.
Under KS’s leadership, First Pass experienced significant growth, evolving into a thriving organization boasting more than 210 employees by FY18. This remarkable journey culminated in the acquisition of First Pass by MosChip in July 2018, all while maintaining a profitable trajectory since inception. Following the acquisition, KS assumed the role of heading the Semiconductor Business Unit at MosChip, steering it to remarkable heights.
Before his tenure at First Pass, KS held the position of General Manager for the VLSI group at Cyient (formerly known as Infotech Enterprises) in India. His career also includes stints with notable organizations such as TTM Inc. in San Jose, US; TTM India (acquired by Infotech in September 2008) Pvt Ltd in Hyderabad, India; Ikanos Communications in Fremont, US; QualCore Logic Ltd in India, and HAL in Hyderabad, among others.
KS maintains his commitment to professional education by actively teaching Digital Design and Physical Design at MosChip Institute of Silicon Systems Pvt Ltd, a training institute he co-founded, which was subsequently acquired by MosChip in July 2018. His international experience includes a seven-year tenure in the United States between 2000 and 2007, where he contributed to TTM Inc. and Ikanos Communications
Can you describe your company’s founding vision and how it has evolved to address the changing landscape of the semiconductor industry?
Founded in 1999, MosChip’s vision was fundamentally rooted in the belief of building India’s first fabless semiconductor company, designing and delivering cutting-edge chips for global markets. We used to design, develop, and ship millions of connectivity ICs. The industry has undergone a significant transformation, shifting from standalone products to integrated solutions. With this, our company’s vision naturally evolved, focusing on offering end-to-end solutions with silicon and product engineering services that address the emerging demands and keep MosChip relevant in a rapidly changing industry.
Our vision is to be the trusted engineering services partner, enabling next-generation solutions – from silicon to systems to experience. Looking ahead, it will continue to evolve in response to the industry’s needs. As semiconductors become the foundation for everything from climate solutions to space exploration, MosChip is positioning itself not just to participate in this transformation, but to help define it.
What core technological capabilities and innovations differentiate your company and position you for future success in the semiconductor market?
Our differentiation lies in our ability to deliver engineering excellence for our customers, from an idea to a real-world product – across both Silicon and Product Engineering practices. From chips to devices to innovative digital solutions, we’re one of the few companies in the world with deep expertise in the silicon and product engineering value chain.
Our Silicon Engineering foundation is built over 26+ years of experience in delivering a competitive edge for our customers through custom design services, where we have expertise spanning the entire silicon design spectrum: RTL to volume production. Our silicon engineering services encompass turnkey ASIC design, services, and IP services for customization, porting, and integration.
Beyond silicon, our Product Engineering excellence helps clients engineer connected and intelligent product ecosystems – seamlessly integrating the cohesive product with our expertise across Hardware engineering, Device Software, and Digital technologies. A lot of our work involves full-cycle engineering – from ideation to the prototypes to manufacturing, and later into product transformation, feature enhancements, and EoL. We cover not just electronic boards, software, and AI, but also mechanical design, manufacturability, and system compliance—building with a real-world product mindset.
Beyond your current product portfolio, what emerging technologies are you actively researching or developing, and what are the potential applications and market opportunities?
Today’s enterprises demand a powerful approach to address the increasing complexity, accelerate innovation, and maintain a competitive edge.
The major initiative in the silicon engineering practice was to explore the potential of AI-assisted design tools, particularly leveraging Agentic-AI capabilities in the ASIC/SoCs design cycle. We see significant opportunities for how autonomous AI agents could revolutionize EDA workflows, from automated verification and optimization to intelligent resource allocation and design space exploration.
We also introduced the MosChip DigitalSky GenAIoT solution accelerator suite early in 2025. It is a comprehensive suite that integrates IoT, AI, Generative AI, Edge AI, workflow automation, and security into a modular ecosystem, accelerating the solution’s time-to-market. This enables our customers to build next-generation connected products faster and more efficiently.
What are the most pressing challenges currently facing the semiconductor industry, and how is your company uniquely positioned to address them?
The semiconductor industry is at an inflection point, while demand is exploding across AI, automotive, 5G, and IoT, the industry faces pressing challenges on multiple fronts. Supply chain fragility, rising design complexity, escalating costs at advanced nodes, and a global shortage of skilled talent are among the biggest hurdles today.
Our unique positioning comes from being both deeply specialized and broadly connected. We are a semiconductor design services company with the agility to adapt quickly. We address design complexity through domain-specific expertise in areas like mixed-signal, analog, and AI-driven SoCs, while also investing in accelerators that reduce cost and time-to-market
On the supply chain side, our ecosystem partnerships with foundries, EDA vendors, and IP providers ensure that our customers benefit from seamless integration and early access to cutting-edge technologies. And when it comes to the talent challenge, we are not just hiring; we are building a scalable talent pipeline through our dedicated institute, MosChip Academy of Silicon Systems & Technologies Private Limited (MAST), where graduate engineers are trained in silicon design courses by industry technocrats.
Which market segments or applications do you see as having the greatest potential for growth in the next 5-10 years, and what is your company’s strategy to capitalize on these opportunities?
We see compelling growth in a few key areas. High-Performance Computing (HPC) and AI represent a transformative growth area, where our early expertise in CPUs and GPUs creates a significant competitive advantage in catering to this market. We have been working on several client projects, specifically targeting HPC and AI applications.
The automotive sector, driven by the major automotive companies across the globe, is shifting its focus to developing its own Automotive SoCs, thereby reducing external dependency on the supply chain. This requires designing automotive-grade SoCs, and MosChip has automotive experts with experience in designing Automotive chips for some of our clients in this domain.
We expect to see a significant growth in Industrial, Consumer Electronics, IoT, and Telecom segments over the next few years.
What emerging technologies (e.g., AI, quantum computing, advanced packaging) will have the most significant impact on the semiconductor industry, and how is your company preparing to integrate these advancements?
AI-driven design and advanced packaging are poised to shape the next phase of semiconductor development. AI-enabled EDA tools will streamline verification, optimization, and design-space exploration, while embedded AI capabilities will empower products with autonomous intelligence. Concurrently, 2.5D/3D stacking and chiplet-based architecture will deliver higher performance per watt and flexible system scaling.
To capitalize on these trends, MosChip is currently exploring embedding AI into our design flows via intelligent EDA tools. On the other hand, we are already working on a chiplet-based architecture for a high-performance computing processor for CDAC. We also plan to forge strategic collaborations with leading technology partners going forward.
The companies that can seamlessly integrate these advancements into practical, scalable solutions will define the next chapter of the semiconductor industry, and our vision is to be among the leaders in this endeavor.
What role do you see your company playing in shaping the future of the semiconductor industry, and what are your key initiatives to achieve this vision?
The semiconductor industry is at the heart of every major technological transformation -AI, IoT, automotive, 5G, edge computing, and beyond. At our company, we see our role as an enabler of innovation, helping global product and system companies accelerate their semiconductor design cycles, reduce risks, and deliver differentiated solutions faster to market.
We are shaping the future of the industry by building deep capabilities across the silicon lifecycle from architecture and design to verification, prototyping, and production support, while integrating emerging technologies like AI/ML-driven design automation and domain-specific AI accelerators.
Our key initiatives include expanding specialized engineering talent pools, driving ecosystem partnerships with foundries, EDA vendors, and product companies to bring collaborative innovation, and focusing on vertical-specific offerings.
What strategic partnerships or collaborations are crucial to your company’s success in navigating the future of the semiconductor industry?
The future of semiconductor industry will be shaped by collaboration, and not isolation. For us, strategic partnerships across the value chain are central to our success.
We work closely with leading foundries to ensure first-time-right silicon and seamless production ramp-up. Our collaborations with EDA and IP vendors enable us to leverage the latest design automation tools and reusable IP cores, thereby reducing the time-to-market for our customers. On the system side, we partner with OEMs to co-innovate domain-specific solutions in automotive, industrial, and edge AI applications.
What are your strategies for attracting and retaining top talent to support your long-term technological vision?
In the semiconductor industry, talent is the true differentiator. Our long-term technological vision can only be realized if we continue to attract, nurture, and retain the best engineering minds. To achieve this, we focus on creating a culture of innovation and impact where our engineers work on cutting-edge technologies/tools, allowing them to contribute to complex challenges.
We are committed to employee well-being, inclusiveness, and career growth. By offering global exposure, clear growth pathways, and a collaborative environment, we ensure that talent not only joins us but also chooses to grow with us.
Moreover, we also have our dedicated institute, MosChip Academy of Silicon Systems & Technologies Private Limited (MAST), where graduate engineers are trained in silicon design courses by industry technocrats with 35+ years of VLSI experience. The curriculum directly addresses real-world industry requirements. This also provides us with a direct pipeline of industry-ready talent, allowing us to shape skills according to market needs.
How is your company fostering innovation and collaboration within the broader semiconductor ecosystem?
On a broader scale, we foster collaboration in the semiconductor ecosystem by being active contributors, not just consumers – whether it is developing next-gen silicon, publishing innovative thought leadership, or mentoring the talent pool. Our role is to be a catalyst: enabling new ideas to move from concept to silicon faster, and creating a culture where innovation is continuous, collaborative, and impactful.
Our collaboration with industry associations such as IESA keeps us closely connected to the evolving needs of India’s semiconductor ecosystem, allowing us to share insights and actively participate in sector-wide initiatives.
Another example is our Smart Meter IC development under the Design Linked Incentive scheme for the energy and utility sector (DLI – Indian government scheme offering financial incentives to Indian semiconductor companies for development and deployment of semiconductor designs) , and the High Performance Computing processor development for Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC – A premier Indian research and development organization under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology), which demonstrates our commitment to addressing emerging industry needs through focused industry-government initiatives.
