—
N.V. Maslekar, Managing Director, Sattva eTech India Pvt Ltd
Part of the
Salapuria Group,
Sattva eTech is a Bengaluru based
embedded product design and engineering services
company. It caters to key verticals like industrial automation,
power, medical instrumentation, defence, computer
networks, etc.
N.V. Maslekar takes us through the
intricacies of embedded design, and stresses on its
growing importance in emerging India. Maslekar also
shares his company's future plans whilst foreseeing
India to be a hub for design-led manufacturing. An interview
by
Venugopal Pillai.
To begin with, please tell us in simple terms what embedded design means and how it helps in
streamlining/improving process.
An embedded system is an electronic system designed and embedded in the hardware of a
system. The objective of an embedded system is to perform one or more dedicated functions.
These functions often operate under real-time computing constraints. Typically an embedded
system needs to have a very small footprint. The embedded system is a part of a complete device
often including hardware and mechanical parts. The embedded system typically helps in reducing
size of a system, provides flexibility in usage and enables cost and wastage reduction.
What are the various industries to which Sattva eTech caters to? Please discuss, in some detail,
the relevance of embedded design in the power sector.
Sattva eTech operates in strategically identified verticals. Some of the verticals Sattva eTech
operates in are industrial automation, power, medical instrumentation, defence & military, and
computer networks. Sattva eTech has designed various systems for these verticals, both for
customers in India and overseas.
In the power industry vertical, Sattva eTech is particularly focused on the nuclear power
sector, a sector where Sattva eTech has been operating in for over the last eight years.
In the nuclear power industry, reliability and safety are some of the major requirements. All
control systems and electronic modules in a nuclear power plant comprise of embedded systems.
It is imperative that all these embedded systems work as per critically defined standards, making
the devices smarter, more reliable and also cost effective to develop and maintain. In the nuclear
power sector, some of the systems designed by Sattva eTech are dual media modems, customized
CPU boards and IO boards. These systems perform various critical functions in nuclear power
plants including keeping the most up-to-date data on the controller, and continuing to monitor
plant systems in the face of communications or back-end disruption.
Currently, who are your major clients? Going forward, which industry
segments are likely to drive your business growth?
Our major clientele includes nuclear power plants in India, semiconductor
manufacturers in Switzerland, industrial pump systems manufacturers in
USA and a Government of India-owned electronics company.
The industry segments which are going to drive our business into the
near future are industrial automation, power, defence, aerospace and
computer networks.
Tell us about your development centre in Bengaluru. We understand that
you undertake manufacturing of boards by yourself and also through
partners. Please elaborate.
We have a 10,000 sqft design and development center in Bangalore, India.
We have facilities for PCB assembly and testing. We have established a
very capable and versatile network of manufacturing partners and
ancillary units. As and when we get orders of large volume for
manufacturing, we out source the same to our
manufacturing partners. We have fully equipped
testing, certification and integration
units at our facility and
ensure that the
manufactured products delivered from our unit meet the exacting
standards required by our customers. Due to our strategy of developing a
flexible supply chain and also outsourcing our manufacturing, we are
geared to provide small volume high value design and manufacturing for
our clients too.
Please summarize your expansion plans in terms of your Bengaluru
development centre, and also with respect to your board
manufacturing capabilities.
We at Sattva eTech are in the business of conceptualization and design of
the embedded system based products for our customers. The
manufacturing is outsourced. We have worked hard with and developed a
solid manufacturing base in the country. In particular, we out-source the
PCB fabrication and assembly of our boards and therefore we do not have
a PCB fabrication plant of our own. It is done by our manufacturing
partners in plants certified by us and as per our prescribed manufacturing
standards. We buy all the bill of materials from overseas and supply them
to our manufacturing partners.
Unit testing and integration testing and QA/QC is done by us. We have a
limited facility for the assembly of boards.
Our capex is therefore more towards enhancing our design,
development, QA/QC and integration capabilities. We are planning to add
floor space for our development center in next few years. We shall also
invest in strengthening our manufacturing capabilities through our
partner network.
Tell us about your overseas business. We also understand that Sattva
eTech has forged strategic alliances to cater to the international market.
We have customers based in across the globe—in particular in the USA,
UK and Switzerland. A significant portion of our revenues comes from the
overseas markets where we are represented directly or through our
partners.
A case in example is our partnership with CBI, Netherlands who help us
to market our services in the European market. We are also participating
in the Hannover Messe 2011 trade fair this year.
How do you see future demand from the Indian power sector that is on a
major capacity addition drive?
Given the huge gap between the supply and demand of power, the
government initiative in delinking power generation from
transmission and distribution and also in ensuring viability of the
sector as a whole, Sattva eTech believes that this sector is poised for
a huge growth as we go in to this decade. This is also borne out by the
huge capex outlays that are being done to enhance capacity in all
segments (equipment manufacturing, transmission and distribution)
of the power industry.
What is your vision of the future of the embedded design industry in India?
Where do you see Sattva eTech, say, five years down the line?
From the perspective of embedded design and electronics
manufacturing for the power industry, Sattva eTech believes this will
gain more importance as India is becoming a favoured investment and
manufacturing destination for setting of facilities to manufacture highvalue
but low-volume products. With IPR protection act in place, India
will become a preferred destination for more product development
activities which shall ultimately lead to design led manufacturing being
centered in the country.
The embedded design industry will grow by a minimum of 30 per cent
every year and we aim to become one of most sought after company in the
embedded design industry in five years time.