Chennai: Mindgrove Technologies, in partnership with AtumX, has launched ‘AGNI’, India’s first indigenous chip-powered developer board powered by an indigenously designed chip.
The initiative begins with five government schools in Chennai, where around 1,000 students will become the first in India to build projects using a developer board powered by an indigenously designed chip.
The rollout is being supported by the Atal Innovation Mission.
The AGNI board, developed in partnership with AtumX Innovations, runs on Mindgrove’s Secure IoT SoC, India’s first commercial-grade high-performance microcontroller.
AtumX has adapted the board for classroom use with a student-friendly Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that enables learners to progress from block-based coding to artificial intelligence (AI).
The deployment marks India’s first indigenous chip-powered developer board built on an indigenously designed chip.
According to the companies, engineers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) building electronics in India have not had a homegrown developer board to begin product development until now.
The chip-powered developer board is intended to provide an indigenous starting point for evaluation through deployment.
Mindgrove said the deployment of AGNI is aimed at building a talent pipeline that begins in classrooms and extends to engineers and OEMs ahead of the company’s upcoming chip launches.
The company stated that the chip-powered developer board are designed to help create its future talent pipeline before market entry.
“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,” he added.
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For years, educational institutions have relied on imported boards to teach chip design.
The companies said the new chip-powered developer board is intended to reduce that dependency by introducing students to hardware designed and manufactured in India from the beginning of their learning journey.
According to the announcement, providing students with the same development tools used by engineers enables them to be better prepared when they pursue chip development in higher education and professional careers.
The initiative also aims to encourage students across India to learn using 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 serves as the foundation for the initiative’s broader expansion. Supported by the Atal Innovation Mission, the rollout of the chip-powered developer board will be extended to government schools in additional Indian cities in the coming months.
