’Buddy instead of blaming others…’: Semiconductor startup founder’s brutal response to Piyush Goyal’s rant | Mint

A semiconductor startup founder’s rant on Reddit is going viral after Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s criticism of the Indian startup ecosystem created an uproar among India Inc leaders. In a brutal comeback to Goyal’s rant that ‘no one is doing semiconductors in India’, the startup founder wrote a long point-by-point response to the union minister, explaining how the government has startups in India due to lengthy technical difficulties and a massive tax pile.

The semiconductor startup founder’s response on Reddit was retweeted by Mohandas Pai, a leading chartered accountant, Padma Shri awardee, and chairperson of the private equity fund Aarin Capital. Pai is the former chief financial officer (CFO) and board member of Infosys. See the post here-

In his Reddit post, the founder said, ” Piyush Goel: I am a semiconductor startup founder. Here is my rant in response to your rant during startup Mahakumbh!
Piyush,
I heard that you ranted that no one is doing semiconductors, Well I am, now you hear my rant!
After decades of experience designing some of the most complex chips, I left Intel, and started a semiconductor company in 2018. We are profitable. We design chips for clients in US and EU. One of our client is known as “The father of AI” That’s as deeptech as you can get!,” said the founder in his post.

The Reddit user added that the startup has stopped wasting its time trying to get Indian clients (private sector, government, defense). “Here is honest feedback from the startup you said everyone should be doing!” claimed the founder. The Reddit user then gave a point-wise explanation of the difficulties that Indian startups face due to systemic loopholes and localised issues.

1.“I have attended quite a few RFQs by Meity. At a few sessions, I said, “We have the experience and capability to develop the chip as per your specification. We will incur a NRE cost of XX crores. How many chips are you planning to buy?” I either got a “you build it then we will decide” or “we wont buy, you go and find whether there is a market for this”! No startup is going to burn two years and 10-20 crores on a product which has no buyer and no market,” said the user.

2.The startup founder then added, “At one of the meetings organized for startups by the defense sector, a speaker from govt spoke for over an hour on how they are facing difficulty with a particular tech. At the end of his speech I met him and informed him that “we have solved some of his pain points for our clients, what would be the best way to engage with his department?”

–When the founder said that to a person from private sector, he/she immediately got a few questions about what he/she thinks about the problem statement, followed by a meeting schedule to discuss the matter further…

—“From your defense genius I got a long rant on how they are not dumb, they are bright people capable of solving their problems, who have been working day and night and have not seen their families for months… They do not need help from private sector (it seems they were forced to seek help by govt hence that meeting) and will eventually solve it on their own!,” said the founder.

The Reddit user added, directly questioning Goyal, “If your people are not open to help, why waste our time holding a two-day conference for PPP?”

3.Thirdly, the founder said that since the government can neither give contracts nor facilitate them, the best thing they can do is ease of business. “And buddy, you have failed in this too!” said the founder in a direct criticism of the union minister.

—“My startup is eligible for certain tax breaks. Your department sat on my application for over two years. It returned it to me last week asking for “Additional documents” with a note that after submitting the documents, my application will again go to the back of the queue (i.e. another two years)!” said the founder.

Within a few hours of being rejected, the founder received a call from a “facilitator” who promised quick and guaranteed results if he/she used their service for “preparing their documents”!

—“Due to your tax laws, I end up paying 2X the amount (compared to my competitors outside India) for importing compute resources, EDA Licenses, equipment and raw material! If I need to import a 10$ wireless device for my lab, I need to pay INR 10,000 to WPC to get approval to import it!,” said the user.

—“Some of your faulty portals have eaten up tens of thousands of my company’s money and until I go and meet your babu they will not initiate a refund!,” said the startup founder. “Buddy instead of blaming others focused on your job (Good governance) and got out of our way, we entrepreneurs have the capability to build world class products,” concluded the startup founder in his post.