As the RISC-V ecosystem expands, the startup advances a clear premise: hardware innovation must be matched by equal progress in trust, quality, and security.
Reimagining pre-silicon quality and security for India’s RISC-V era, Vyoma Systems is a Chennai-based deep-tech startup founded in 2021 and incubated at IIT Madras Pravartak. Headquartered in Chennai and operating as a private limited firm, the company focuses on one of the semiconductor industry’s most complex and underestimated challenges: pre-silicon verification and security.
At the core of its offering is UpTickPro, a unified, cloud-enabled pre-silicon platform that integrates functional verification, FPGA-based validation, early software bring-up, and side-channel security analysis. By adopting a Python-based methodology over traditional SystemVerilog UVM flows and costly EDA toolchains, the platform reduces regression cycles, accelerates coverage closure, embeds security earlier in the design lifecycle, and reportedly halves verification time. Agentic AI workflows further enhance regression analysis and coverage review, enabling small teams to deliver outcomes comparable to larger verification groups.
The company was founded to address a critical gap in the growing RISC-V ecosystem. As startups and enterprises increasingly adopt domain-specific and custom processor architectures, verification remains costly, time-intensive, and reliant on large engineering teams. For emerging Indian design houses, this creates barriers in cost, time-to-market, and technical complexity. The founders identified that the primary bottleneck in chip innovation lies not only in architecture, but in achieving functional correctness, faster coverage closure, and robust pre-silicon security.
The name ‘Vyoma,’ derived from Sanskrit for ‘sky’ or ‘space,’ reflects the company’s ambition to build a secure and expansive foundation for India’s semiconductor ecosystem. Its core innovation lies in shifting verification and security earlier in the design lifecycle. A key differentiator is its pre-silicon side-channel analysis capability, which examines RTL-level switching activity to predict power, timing, or electromagnetic leakage before fabrication. Traditionally, such vulnerabilities are identified post-silicon, when mitigation is costly or impractical. Validated against FPGA-level measurements, this approach enables corrective action during the design phase.
Industry-academia collaboration has played a significant role in shaping the platform. Engagement with the Shakti Processors research groups at IIT Madras provided exposure to real-world RISC-V implementation challenges, early validation platforms, and ecosystem credibility. Over time, the company has evolved from offering standalone verification IP blocks to delivering an integrated platform environment, marking a shift towards platform-as-a-service delivery.
Operating with a compact team of around five engineers, the firm demonstrates high-leverage engineering. AI copilots and orchestration systems support code development, regression management, and coverage analysis, enabling output comparable to much larger teams. The company follows a subscription-based revenue model, with both cloud and on-premise deployment options, serving RISC-V startups, academic institutions, and established semiconductor companies, including international clients.
As a RISC-V quality and security solutions provider, the company does not manufacture chips or operate fabrication plants. Instead, it supports fabless semiconductor companies and design houses through an asset-light strategy focused on pre-silicon design verification, emulation, software bring-up, side-channel analysis, and domain expertise. Growth has been largely bootstrapped, supplemented by funding from IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation, IIT Madras Incubation Cell, and Tamil Nadu’s Startup TN TANSEED grant, with revenues driven primarily by customer subscriptions rather than venture capital.
Investments have prioritised advanced compute infrastructure, FPGA prototyping platforms, security tooling, and specialised talent rather than physical manufacturing assets. Given the trust-sensitive nature of semiconductor verification, building credibility remains a central challenge, particularly when handling proprietary IP and integrating AI-driven workflows into quality-critical processes.
Looking ahead, the company aims to deepen AI integration across the verification lifecycle, expand partnerships within India, and enter global RISC-V markets in the United States and Europe. Future growth will depend on scaling engineering talent, strengthening ecosystem collaborations, and onboarding domain-aware channel partners with established semiconductor networks. Continued academic partnerships in hardware security, formal verification, and advanced RISC-V extensions remain central to its long-term innovation strategy.
As India accelerates its semiconductor ambitions, Vyoma Systems positions itself not just as a platform provider but as a foundational partner in enabling trustworthy silicon—ensuring that every chip design achieves uncompromising reliability and security before fabrication.