Using cutting edge tech to help Davids take on Goliaths

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which rarely get to look beyond quarterly survival and profits, are now beginning to seek the services of blue-blooded industrial design companies to raise the bar on their products and challenge bigger brands.

Consider this. With big businesses putting everything on hold, including new product design, Vinay Rao, founder of Bangalore-based Bang Design has now started working with SMEs. “We have a new engagement model for SMEs — we don’t just reduce our fees, we partner them and seek royalty in the product or equity in the company. Until now, SMEs never thought about design as a tool for business growth,” he says.

Bang Design — which has been working with global technology majors like Dell and Microsoft — has worked with companies like D-Link to create major innovations like the snagless cable . D-Link was the first company in the world to a launch the snagless Ethernet connector cable that is now an industry standard.  

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 The Catcher Defense Grizzly: It’s a rugged, advanced convergent platform that combines computing power with communications and audio/video technologies as well as biometric sensors and global positioning system (GPS) capabilities. The product is typically deployed in war zones where operating conditions are unpredictable.

* Portable Media assistant: Ittiam wanted to go to market with a design that showcased their cutting edge multimedia technology. Bang developed a compact media 'assistant’, with a universal interface that allows a number of (future) applications to be ported on the device, without hampering navigation. The Product won a NID Design Excellence Award 2005.

* Snagless Cable: D-Links’ problem was that the Ethernet connector crimped to their cables would break at the time of installation rendering the cable useless until a new connector was fitted, which involved time and labour. The solution was to integrate a protection profile into the cable itself, even though it involved new production processes and investment.

Bang Design has also worked on the design for Tata Indicom’s Access Business Unit to create a multifunctional terminal delivering features beyond the capability of a mere phone booth from a public domain user perspective. “Although the design could have been better in terms of aesthetics, it was perfect from the engineering point of view and rugged enough for larger user volumes,” says Kaustuv Chatterjee who was heading marketing for the product but left Tata in 2007. The Tata Indicom Parsec went on to win a NID Design award in 2007. 

With his background, Rao has now begun to put all his experience to work for SMEs who he says “are coming out to play.” Two such examples are Captain Public — a stealth-mode company in the retail space — and Sloka, a manufacturer of Wi-Max equipment for Enterprise data access in urban environments, Voice over IP, cellular backhaul and residential Internet. Sloka, which won a NASSCOM Innovations Award in 2008, recently rolled out its first devices in France. They were designed by Bang.

“We needed an all-weather base station that could cool without a cooling device. We couldn’t find such an enclosure anywhere in the world. I had heard that Bang had done an enclosure for wireless equipment to be used in boats, so we got Bang to design our stuff. It passed the DRDO lab test and other thermal and moisture tests and we are very happy with the design,” says Sloka founder Sujai Karampuri.  

Fortunately, the government has realised the necessity for design intervention in this space and has set up a fund that is propelling interest in design from SMEs. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has set up the Technopreneur Promotion Program (TePP). Proposals for 2009-10 have been invited. The TePP hopes to provide grants, technical guidance and mentoring to independent innovators. With a maximum funding of Rs 15 lakh, the TePP is meant for unattached independent innovators like micro and small entrepreneurs working on new designs. These include start-up firms and incubated firms have a turnover of less than Rs 45 lakh.  

This is where companies like Bangalore’s Idiom (working on the 2010 Commonwealth Games), Desmania of Delhi (that has excelled in structural packaging) and even Tata Elxsi (with their tremendous insight into consumer behaviour) also fit in. Once they begin to address the SMEs, which they inevitably will, Indian products will acquire a new dimension in aesthetics and usability.

The author is an independent, Bangalore-based content and communications consultant