Mindgrove and AtumX Partner to Bring India’s First Indigenously Designed Chip-Powered Developer Board to Government Classrooms, Starting in Chennai
Chennai — Mindgrove Technologies, in partnership with AtumX, has launched ‘AGNI’ – India’s first indigenous developer board, powered by an indigenously designed chip. The rollout begins with 5 select government schools in Chennai, reaching around 1,000 students, with support from Atal Innovation Mission. The board is powered by Mindgrove’s Secure IoT SoC, and AtumX has adapted it for the classroom with a student-friendly IDE that takes learners from block-based coding to AI.
This deployment marks India’s first indigenous developer board built on an indigenously designed chip. Engineers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) building electronics in India have not had a homegrown board to start on until now. This board gives them an indigenous starting point from evaluation through deployment. Mindgrove, through the deployment of AGNI, is building a pipeline that starts in classrooms and extends to engineers and OEMs ahead of its upcoming chip launches, positioning the boards as the way the company builds its talent pipeline before market entry, not after it.
“Every engineer in India who wanted to build with silicon has had to start on an imported chip and board. We built our developer board to change that starting point. The board is designed and manufactured in India, so the first board an Indian engineer ever touches can be an Indian one,” said Shashwath T R, Co-founder & CEO of Mindgrove Technologies. “That matters beyond one classroom. Every engineer who starts on an Indian board grows India’s talent pipeline and strengthens the ecosystem around it. As more engineers and OEMs use these boards, they become part of India’s semiconductor story too, not just ours. Chennai is step one.”
Institutes have relied on imported boards to teach chip design for years, and this board will end that dependency in the classroom first. A student given the same tools an engineer uses is ready the day they decide to build a chip, not years later, trying to catch up. The direction is clear, students across India should be learning on hardware built in India.
“A school student who learns on an Indian chip today will do his college projects on an Indian chip, file his patents on an Indian chip, and build his startup on an Indian chip. Agni is not just a microcontroller in a school. It’s the first chapter of India’s indigenous technology story written by the students themselves”, said Akash J, Co-founder & CEO of AtumX.
The Chennai deployment is the foundation for an indigenous semiconductor ecosystem. Supported by the Atal Innovation Mission, the rollout will expand to government schools of additional Indian cities in the coming months.
