Semiconductor Startup Sophrosyne Bags $2 Mn From Bluehill VC

Semiconductor startup Sophrosyne Technologies has raised $2 Mn (about INR 17.7 Cr) in a seed funding round from early-stage venture capital firm Bluehill Capital. The funding for the startup materialised shortly after it secured a design linked incentive (DLI) grant of $1.2 Mn from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). 

With the fresh capital, Sophrosyne intends to accelerate the transition from prototype silicon to full-scale product commercialisation, grow its silicon and firmware design teams, and expand early customer deployments both within India and internationally. 

Founded by Manish Srivastava in 2022, Sophrosyne Technologies is a fabless semiconductor startup which is developing multi-vital biosensing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for wearable and digital health devices. It aims to consolidate ECG, PPG, respiration, and temperature monitoring into a single, ultra-low-power silicon, enabling energy-efficient, compact medical wearables. 

Sophrosyne’s flagship product will be a purpose-built semiconductor platform engineered to deliver high-precision performance with multi-vital tracking capability for medical-grade health monitoring applications.

Besides, it is also building proprietary AI models for advanced signal processing, deep learning, and on-edge optimisation to transform physiological data into actionable health insights.

Although it is still in the development phase, the startup intends to sell its tech to global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and device manufacturers seeking integrated and affordable health monitoring solutions.

“We are moving toward production-grade silicon and early OEM rollouts. Having a deep-tech investor like Bluehill VC, backed by leaders such as Vinod Dham, Manu Iyer and Sridhar Parthasarathi gives us access to world-class semiconductor guidance that few startups can tap into,” Srivastava said. 

The funding round for the Bengaluru-based startup has materialised at a time when the overall semiconductor industry of the country has been expanding swiftly buoyed by an aggressive regulatory push.

A key component to the regulatory push is the Indian Semiconductor Mission (ISM), which aims to provide financial support for investments in semiconductor fabrication, display manufacturing and chip design to strengthen India’s integration into global electronics value chains. 

Under the Mission, the Centre claims to have provided “design infrastructure support” to 278 academic institutions and 72 startups, along with training about 60K students in semiconductor fabrication.

After announcing the Indian Semiconductor Mission (ISM) four years back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the country’s first indigenous semiconductor chip, the Vikram 32-bit processor, developed by ISRO’s Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL) in collaboration with the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Semicon India 2025.

The chip is designed to be space-grade, meaning it can withstand extreme conditions like those found in space and in defense systems. 

On the private front, the Centre has cleared 10 semiconductor projects with a cumulative investment commitment of INR 1.60 Lakh Cr. These projects are helmed by companies like Micron, Kaynes, Tata Electronics, SiCSem, among others.

At the heart of all this is the homegrown semiconductor market which, as per Inc42, is expected to become a $150 Bn opportunity by 2030.