Bluehill VC, a frontier-tech-focused venture capital fund, has led a ₹10.2 crore seed round in Makr Microsystems, a semiconductor metrology company. According to reports from The Hindu BusinessLine, ETEntrepreneur, Economic Times, and Moneycontrol, the funding round also included participation from Artha Venture Fund. The seed capital will support the company's continued technology development, customer validation and progression toward commercial deployment. As per startupsuccessstories.in, Manu Iyer, General Partner at Bluehill VC, emphasized their excitement about companies that sit deeper in critical technology value chains, stating this represents a global opportunity where world-class semiconductor equipment and technology can be built from India.
As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, ETEntrepreneur, Economic Times, and Moneycontrol, Makr Microsystems is developing technology that allows chipmakers to see and measure what is happening beneath the surface of a chip at the nanoscale. The company's core technology is Acoustic Atomic Force Microscopy (AAFM), which combines atomic force microscopy with acoustic sensing to access information beneath the surface of semiconductor structures. The technology uses acoustic signals and a scanning probe to gather information from beneath the surface of a chip. According to ETEntrepreneur, the startup is developing this into a platform for high-resolution subsurface measurement without damaging the sample. The company's technology combines AAFM with optical tomography and 3D data analytics software to enable high-resolution, non-destructive analysis. As per Moneycontrol, the company is building its core technology around this nanoscale 3D subsurface metrology technology that allows chipmakers to visualise and measure structures beneath semiconductor surfaces.
According to The Hindu BusinessLine, ETEntrepreneur, Economic Times, and Moneycontrol, as semiconductor devices become smaller and more complex, more of the structures that matter are moving below the surface. Advanced packaging, chiplets and 3D architectures increasingly rely on interfaces and connections that can be buried beneath multiple layers of material. The initial applications for Makr's technology include advanced packaging, hybrid bonding, buried interfaces, chiplet interconnects and defect detection - areas where understanding what is happening beneath the surface is becoming increasingly important. As per Moneycontrol, as semiconductor architectures become more complex, critical structures are increasingly moving below the surface, making non-destructive inspection important for identifying defects and improving yields. As founder Ashwin Lal noted, semiconductor manufacturing is creating structures that are increasingly difficult to see and measure, with the company's goal to make the subsurface measurable non-destructively and at the resolution required by the next generation of chipmaking.
As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, ETEntrepreneur, Economic Times, and Moneycontrol, Makr Microsystems is led by Ashwin Lal, who brings experience across semiconductor technology and scientific instrumentation. Lal holds an M.Sc. in Physics from IIT Kanpur and a Ph.D. in Microtechnology from EPFL, and has previously founded Shilps Sciences and worked as an engineer at Applied Materials. The broader team brings expertise across semiconductor metrology, atomic force microscopy, scanning probe systems, MEMS, embedded systems and scientific instrumentation. According to ETEntrepreneur, Lal emphasized that semiconductor manufacturing is creating structures that are increasingly difficult to see and measure, highlighting the company's mission to address these challenges through their advanced metrology solutions.
According to The Hindu BusinessLine, ETEntrepreneur, Economic Times, and Moneycontrol, Manu Iyer, General Partner at Bluehill VC, stated that the fund is excited about companies that sit deeper in critical technology value chains. The investment represents Bluehill's strategy to look beyond the most visible parts of the semiconductor value chain to back frontier technologies that can become critical infrastructure for the industry. For Bluehill, this investment is part of the fund's recent announcement of the final close of its maiden fund at ₹400 crore. As per ETEntrepreneur, Iyer noted that Makr is solving a difficult problem in semiconductor manufacturing at a time when the industry is moving toward increasingly complex architectures, representing a global opportunity where world-class semiconductor equipment and technology can be built from India. According to Moneycontrol, the investment comes shortly after Bluehill announced the final close of its maiden ₹400 crore fund, with the fund's focus on deeper layers of the semiconductor value chain, including equipment, measurement and specialised technologies.
