India must take design skills advantage: Endiya Partners’ Sateesh Andra | People

The fund, which has been in India for about a decade, is investing from its third fund of $100 million. In an interview with Udisha Srivastav, on the sidelines of the Semicon India 2026, Andra also spoke about the company’s ongoing fund, ease of doing business, challenges specific to semiconductor startups and policy lapses, among others. Edited excerpts:

The sectors you have invested in are similar to what the Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) fund identifies as priority areas. Have you applied under the fund and have any of your portfolio companies been selected?

We haven’t done that. We had closed our fund by that time (the applications opened) and we’re going more and more global. Our orientation is a lot more global. Some of our companies have received investment under RDI; one example is Eyestem. 

What’s your average ticket size in India? What are the other geographies in focus?

We’re actively investing from our third fund which is around $100 million. We’ve made 15 investments, and are yet to invest in 5-6 more startups. We put in $7-8 million per company. It’s a little different from many early-stage funds, because they do a lot of investments with smaller checks. In all, for a performing startup from India portfolio, we guarantee them anywhere between $10 and 25 million from our side.

We focus a lot on India. If you think of healthcare, it would be India-centric. We have invested in around 50 companies, of which maybe 20-25 per cent are headquartered overseas.

What kind of exit opportunities are there in deep-tech and semiconductor startups?

It is mostly strategic mergers and acquisitions (M&As). In our portfolio, Steradian Semiconductors was acquired by Renesas Electronics Corporation, and that was one of India’s first semiconductor acquisitions. From an internal rate of return (IRR) perspective, it has been more than 50 per cent and it’s a great IRR. We returned 4x plus to investors from our first fund.

What are the few things that India must focus on to excel in the semiconductor space?

While India is building the necessary infrastructure, which is fabs, assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP), packaging and all that, we have to take advantage of the design skills that are there in the country. To me, that’s very critical. Initially, you will have to create momentum based on your strengths.

These infrastructure ecosystems are very necessary for the country in the medium term, but in the short term, they won’t go live.

Once a semicon or deep-tech startup gets funding, what are the next set of challenges they face?

Funding is a low hanging fruit. The biggest challenge is building the product. For that, there is friction and the ease of doing business is not there in India. But it is getting better. We are nowhere close to developed markets where things happen quickly. For example, if I have to import a few chips, then to get Customs clearance, it will take 60-90 days and somewhere else, it’s taking three days.