By Seema Singh

The Indian semiconductor space, which is already teeming with startups, saw a new entrant Tuesday when Philips Technology Incubator’s business venture Silicon Hive opened its India center in Bangalore and announced a partnership with a local embedded software startup, AllGo Embedded Systems.

Speaking at the 20th International VLSI design conference in Bangalore, Ramanathan Sethuraman, director of Bangalore operations of Silicon Hive, said the new center is looking for new systems and applications software partnerships in India for HiveFlex product lines that encompass semiconductor intellectual property in imaging, communications, and video signal processing.

“We have a French partner, DxO Technologies, in the imaging sector, but we are aggressively looking for worldwide partners in communications and media processing,” said Mr. Sethuraman.

Getting off to a good start, Mr. Sethuraman announced the partnership with AllGo, a two-year-old Bangalore startup founded by three ex-Motorola engineers. Silicon Hive and AllGo are jointly developing a video signal processing demonstration system, with the former providing hardware components and the latter supplying embedded software.

The two partners also plan to develop “fully programmable” video systems that do not exist today, said AllGo CEO K. Srinivasan.

AllGo is currently demonstrating its intellectual property in embedded networking at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The embedded software can allow users to share digital music across a range of personal gadgets like iPods, car decks, mobile phones, and home music systems that now need to be shared physically.

Philips Incubating Tech

Four-year-old Silicon Hive is one business in the half-dozen-strong portfolio of Philips Technology Incubator, owned by Royal Philips Electronics, which fully funds all its ventures until they are spun out as separate entities.

Last Wednesday, Philips announced the first spinout from the Technology Incubator, Polymer Vision, which will become an independent company focusing on products for the rollable display market.

Technology Capital has invested €21 million ($27.3 million) in Polymer and is the major shareholder. Eindhoven, Netherlands-based Philips has retained a 20 percent stake in the new company.

“At a certain stage, businesses in the Incubator are either spun up to a Philips product division or are spun out to form separate independent companies,” said Silicon Hive CEO Atul N. Sinha.

Silicon Hive too is expected to spin off as an independent company in the very near future.