India is taking another important step towards strengthening its semiconductor capabilities and reducing dependence on imported navigation technologies through the development of DhruvaPro, an indigenous navigation receiver chip created by MumbaiSemi, a deep-tech Start-Up that emerged from IIT-Bombay.

Developed after several years of research and engineering work, DhruvaPro has been designed to receive signals from India’s Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) system while also supporting major global satellite navigation networks, including GPS, Galileo and BeiDou.

NavIC, developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was created to provide India with an independent satellite navigation capability. The system offers positioning, navigation and timing services across India and surrounding regions, reducing reliance on foreign-controlled navigation infrastructure.

However, building a satellite navigation constellation is only one part of the technological challenge. Devices such as smartphones, vehicle-tracking systems, logistics platforms and navigation equipment require specialised receiver chips capable of detecting and processing satellite signals.

For many years, a significant proportion of such receiver technology has been sourced from overseas manufacturers. As a result, the availability of domestic hardware capable of fully supporting NavIC has remained limited.

DhruvaPro has been developed to address this gap by providing an Indian-designed solution capable of receiving and processing signals from multiple global navigation satellite systems on a single platform. This multi-constellation capability allows devices to access navigation data from NavIC alongside GPS, Galileo and BeiDou.

The chip is the product of extensive research originating at IIT-Bombay, where work on indigenous navigation receiver technology progressed through multiple development stages before being commercialised by MumbaiSemi.

One of the notable aspects of the technology is its reconfigurable architecture, which enables support for different navigation frequency bands. This flexibility makes the chip suitable for a broad range of commercial and industrial applications requiring accurate positioning and timing information.

The development strengthens India’s domestic navigation-chip ecosystem by adding a critical hardware component to the country’s growing semiconductor landscape. Indigenous receiver technology can help create a more complete ecosystem around NavIC and encourage wider adoption of the navigation system.

The achievement also demonstrates the increasing role of Indian academic institutions and deep-tech Start-Ups in developing advanced semiconductor technologies. The collaboration between IIT Bombay researchers and MumbaiSemi highlights how research-driven innovation can be translated into commercially viable products.

Beyond navigation, such semiconductor expertise contributes to the broader objective of developing domestic design capabilities in strategically important technologies. Advanced chip development remains a key area of focus as India seeks to expand its presence in the global semiconductor value chain.

The significance of DhruvaPro extends beyond the chip itself. It represents progress towards technological self-reliance by ensuring that both the satellite infrastructure and the hardware required to access it can increasingly be developed within India.

As India continues investing in indigenous semiconductor manufacturing, electronics design and space-based infrastructure, technologies such as DhruvaPro could play an important role in strengthening national capabilities while supporting future applications across transportation, logistics, automotive systems, mobile devices and connected technologies.

In the larger context, the emergence of an Indian-developed navigation receiver chip demonstrates that achieving true technological independence requires not only satellites in orbit but also the sophisticated semiconductor hardware on the ground that enables people and industries to use those services effectively.

Agencies