Mindgrove Technologies, an IIT Madras incubated fabless semiconductor company has partnered with Chennai based educational technology startup AtumX to supply developer boards to school students. Developer boards are printed circuit boards(PCBs) that contain USB ports, pins, memory and other such components which help users to test and work with chips. As part of the collaboration , Mindgrove and AtumX will make available developer boards to 1,000 students from 5 government schools in Chennai. The partnership is also supported by the Atal Innovation Mission.The board will contain Mindgrove’s Secure IoT SoCs while also offering a student-friendly Integrated Development Environment(IDE) built by AtumX to help them learn to work with the chip. Speaking to businessline, Shashwath TR, Co-founder and CEO of Mindgrove Technologies said that developer boards, also called evaluation boards, are part of the company’s standard chip design collateral for customers. “It is a standard thing we have to give with out chips anyways,” he said.He added that developer boards can end up being an unexpected revenue stream for the company in the long-term. “It is a separate revenue stream coming out of the side effect of building a chip in a certain sense. It has a decent market,” he said. Beyond selling these boards directly to schools and colleges, Shashwath suggests that students using Mindgrove’s develop board will create long term stickiness with them using the company’s chip for future electronics projects. He added that this will be the first time Indian students will be able to train using an indigenous board with an indigenous chip unlike foreign alternatives like Raspberry Pi or Arduino.“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 said in a media release.Supported by the Atal Innovation Mission, the companies plan to expand the rollout to government schools of additional Indian cities in the coming months.Published on July 29, 2026