(Full Episode in Dharwad Kannada) 60% in PUC. Stanford Still Said Yes, How? | Deepak Shapeti | Ep 29

India designs 20% of the world's semiconductors and owns almost none of them. Deepak Shapeti, co-founder and CEO of IISc-incubated Morphing Machines, is trying to change that with REDEFINE — India's own runtime-reconfigurable AI processor. He scored 60% in PUC and 12,000 in CET. Stanford admitted him anyway, and told him plainly: we ignored your marks. This conversation covers what it actually takes to build a fabless semiconductor startup in India — the two-decade research foundation at the Indian Institute of Science, the ₹15 lakh the company started with, the DLI and Chips2Startup schemes now funding a new generation of Indian chip designers, and why India still imports $42 billion of strategic chips every year. Along the way, Deepak breaks down how sand becomes silicon, why his company refuses to call itself an Nvidia killer, and what two failed startups over seven years taught him about his own limits. If you are an engineer wondering whether deep tech is worth the risk, a founder choosing which fight to pick, a student who thinks average marks close doors, or anyone curious about where India's semiconductor mission actually stands — this one is for you. What you'll learn in this episode: ✅ Why 20% of the world's chip designers are Indian, and why that hasn't produced a single globally competitive Indian chip company ✅ How a chip is physically made — from purified sand to a finished processor the size of an insect ✅ The exact reason he refuses to position REDEFINE as an "Nvidia killer," and what he's building instead ✅ What Stanford saw in a student with 60% in PUC — and what he says is the real gap between an Indian engineering college and Silicon Valley ✅ The government schemes that mean a chip startup today needs almost none of your own capital ✅ His five-step method for entering an industry where you have zero background and zero credibility Chapters: 00:00:00 Trailer 00:01:35 Introduction 00:05:30 What is a chip, really? From sand to your phone 00:08:54 India has 20% of the world's chip designers — so why are we 30 years behind? 00:13:42 The "Swiss knife" chip: one chip for defence, telecom and AI 00:18:25 100 research papers, ₹15 lakh: how an IISc lab became a company 00:22:32 "Are you building an Nvidia killer?" 00:25:51 60% in PUC to Stanford: the childhood habit that changed everything 00:32:46 The genetic disease at home that decided his career — and what parents get wrong 00:41:05 Gatecrashing Steve Jobs' speech, and the real gap between BMS and Stanford 00:50:00 The first startup failed: the drug worked, the market didn't 00:57:47 A second failure, and finally knowing your own DNA 01:03:34 Every 3-4 years a new hot field — if it's hot, you're already late 01:08:11 The goal: our chip sitting next to Nvidia's in every data centre 01:11:05 The 5-step playbook to enter any new field from zero 01:17:55 Untapped opportunities: energy, cooling, and data centres in space 01:23:21 Tier-2 cities have the talent — what's missing is belief 01:26:00 Favourites: Vishnuvardhan, Osho, and jolada rotti ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Support Mundhe Banni: https://mundhebanni.org/en/patron Follow Mundhe Banni on Social Media: Instagram:   / mundhebanni.  . https://linktr.ee/mundhebanni Mundhe Banni Website: www.mundhebanni.org For Monthly Update on Startups & Entreprenuership in Kannada Subscribe to Mundhe Banni Newsletter: https://mundhebanni.org/newsletter Join Mundhe Banni WhatsApp Community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/J4Pwge8FIG1... Subscribe to Mundhe Banni Academy: / @mundhebanniacademy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get in touch with the guest:   / deepak-shapeti-4b5493189   About the guest: Deepak Shapeti is Co-founder and CEO of Morphing Machines, a Bengaluru-based fabless semiconductor IP company incubated at the Indian Institute of Science. The company is building REDEFINE, a runtime-reconfigurable many-core processor designed to deliver ASIC-level performance with FPGA-like flexibility for data centres, AI acceleration and high-performance computing. Founded on research by Prof. S. K. Nandy and Dr. Ranjani Narayan — whose work on runtime reconfigurable hardware is cited in the standard academic literature on the field — the company grew out of processor projects for DRDO and Safran Aerospace. Deepak studied at Stanford, holds multiple patents, and spent nearly a decade in failed ventures before joining Morphing Machines. Reconfigurable computing at data-centre scale has been chased since the 1990s and commercialised successfully by almost no one. Whether Morphing Machines succeeds or not, this is the clearest account you'll find in Kannada of what building core computing hardware from India actually involves.