Saankhya Labs, Sinclair to Develop Low Cost D2M Phones for Consumer Trials in India

Saankhya Labs, a subsidiary of Tejas Networks, Free Stream Technologies, incubated at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, and Sinclair announced the companies are collaborating to design and launch a variety of value-for-money mobile phones with augmented Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) broadcast capability. 

These consumer devices will be powered by Saankhya’s Pruthvi-3 ATSC 3.0 chipsets – the next step in India’s semiconductor journey and Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliance.)

Saankhya Labs has done pioneering work in bringing to market broadcast radio heads for cellularization of single frequency networks and building the world’s first D2M smartphone (Mark ONE) reference design. For over two years, next generation D2M technology has undergone trials and field validation in Bengaluru, Delhi and the United States. Now the partnership is commencing consumer trials for multi-media delivery and datacasting use cases. This development leveraging the first ‘Designed in India’ chip comes on the heels of a strong semiconductor push by the Narendra Modi led government in India.

Consumer trials will be conducted on a variety of D2M devices comprising of smartphones, USB dongle accessories, STB/Gateways and a low cost featurephone. They will demonstrate interworking with mobile system-on-a-chip from suppliers with a collective global market share exceeding 70%.

Parag Naik, Founder and CEO of Saankhya Labs

As India’s foremost fabless chip company, Saankhya is delighted to see this path breaking D2M technology getting one step closer to launch. For rapid proliferation of the device ecosystem, we are actively working with a number of mobile device suppliers to develop solutions that integrate our award-winning Software Defined Radio (SDR) chipsets. As an end-to-end originator and supplier of D2M technology – chipsets, radios, software and network infrastructure, we are fully equipped to rapidly validate end-to-end performance and gear up for launch.

Chris Ripley, President and CEO of Sinclair

I firmly believe that low-cost featurephones will be the biggest driver for domestic demand in India since 4G/5G, incentivizing over 300 million featurephone users to shift to broadcast-enabled phones at a low incremental cost. We expect to launch these devices for trials in the first half of 2025. This competitive market segment can be expected to produce affordable phones for the Indian and global markets.

Sumeet Nindrajog, Director of FreeStream

Leading mobile brands clearly see the compelling consumer value proposition in D2M service offerings and are gearing up to scale to the needs of the Indian marketplace when deployment takes off. D2M will ride on the tremendous momentum to expand the mobile technology supply chain in India. As India’s first Chips-to-Platform DeepTech startup, FreeStream is working on putting together a D2M ecosystem that will realize PM Modi’s vision of India’s Techade.

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