60% in PUC. 12,000 Rank in CET. 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