For decades, the invisible airwaves around us—radio frequencies—have been the workhorses of wireless communication. Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, Bluetooth: all rely on a spectrum that is increasingly congested, interference-prone, and vulnerable to interception. But what if the very lights in our offices, homes, and streets could also carry the internet? What if a beam of light, invisible to the naked eye, could deliver speeds of 10 Gbps with absolute security? This is not science fiction. This is the reality being built by Velmenni, a Delhi-based deep-tech startup that has just raised ₹30 crore (approximately $3.3 million) in a pre-Series A funding round to scale its pioneering Li-Fi (Light Fidelity) and Free Space Optics (FSO) technologies .

In every Indian home or office that enjoys high-speed fiber broadband, there is a small, unassuming white box. It terminates the optical cable and converts light into data, enabling our video calls, streaming, and work. Inside that box, historically, sits an imported chip—a piece of silicon designed and manufactured far from Indian shores. A Chennai-based deep-tech startup is on a mission to change that. Aheesa Digital Innovations Pvt. Ltd. , a fabless semiconductor company, has secured a ₹20 crore investment from the Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Fund Management Corporation (TNIFMC) to commercialize its indigenously designed networking chip, VIHAAN-I . Built on the open-standard RISC-V architecture, this chip represents a significant stride toward reducing India’s reliance on imported telecom hardware, a sector long dominated by global giants .