Mindgrove Technologies has teamed up with AtumX to introduce AGNI, India’s first developer board powered by a chip designed and developed within the country. The initiative will initially be rolled out in five government schools in Chennai, giving nearly 1,000 students access to hands-on technology education with support from the Atal Innovation Mission. Built on Mindgrove’s Secure IoT System-on-Chip (SoC), the AGNI board has been customized by AtumX with an easy-to-use integrated development environment (IDE) that helps students progress from block-based programming to AI development.
This deployment marks India’s first indigenous developer board built on an indigenously designed chip. Engineers and 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.
