Electronics products today are an integral part of our lives. They define our habits, enable our routine, and enhance the comfort and quality of our daily activities.
But developing an electronic appliance or digital gadget is intensive research and developmental process. It includes industrial design, electronics, and firmware.
Simply, it is technovation. And modern businesses survive and thrive on an ever-advancing ecosystem of technovations. Thotaka Tekhnologies is providing such an ecosystem of platforms and standards.
It was incorporated in 2005, in Hyderabad, India, by two engineers. At the time of its establishment, it was an electronic engineering services provider firm.
By March 2011, Thotaka licensed out its SCADA-RTU design to a relay manufacturer and evolved into a technology company.
In 2015, Thotaka received New York-based Bravia Capital funding, expanding its technology portfolio.
Since 2017, under its firmcompute brand, Thotaka began designing, producing and supplying electronics for utility meters, blenders, chronographs, data centre monitors, billing machines etc. Thus, it transformed into ODM.
By 2019, Thotaka dedicated itself to IoT Analytics practice on its IoT stack enabling rapid deployments for customers across VPS and heterogeneous cloud.
And from 2019 onwards, Thotaka has consistently designed six new products every year and has transferred a minimum of three designs to production every year.
In an interview with Insights Success for its edition of ‘India’s Most Reliable Semiconductor Companies,’ Thotaka’s CEO, Sriram Subramanian, talks about this incredible journey and what lies ahead for him and his team.
Sriram has 30+ years of experience as a CEO and Director at Thotaka with a demonstrated history of working in the semiconductors industry. He is skilled in strategic negotiations, management, cost control, P&L management, business strategy, team management, supply chain, product development and project management, customer relationship management, vendor management and true value creation.
The excerpts of his interview are reproduced below.
Describe Thotaka in detail.
We are a product engineering and design services company with Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) capability for electronic devices. We support our customers right from the concept stage to volume manufacturing.
Our capabilities include in-house design, a globally proven manufacturing network, fifteen years of supply-chain network, and logistics support.
Our technology competencies are industrial automation, IoT, precision analogue, wireless/RF, multimedia and networking, ultra-low-energy consumption devices, power electronics and motor control.
What made you venture into the semiconductor industry?
We are a product engineering company. We use semiconductors in our product designs.
Semiconductors such as memory chips, microcontrollers, and microprocessors are a backbone and a prerequisite for achieving any goals in the products we develop.
From medical applications, lifestyle electronics, smart home appliances, Artificial Intelligence (AI), retail automation to the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT), or the automotive sector- nothing has been left untouched by semiconductors. Semiconductors are thus a necessity for us.
What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?
- With our fifteen years of cross-domain experience, we assist our customers to build a world-class product with the tested and tried team.
- We enable on-demand, just-in-time manufacturing by taking advantage of spare manufacturing capacity with partner EMS and active inventory management with our supplier partners.
- We are a fabless ODM delivering cutting-edge design and supply chain resiliency. We ensure product upgrades take advantage of technology and fit the evolving customer needs.
What challenges have you faced while entering the semiconductor industry?
As explained before, we use semiconductors in our product designs. The challenge faced in the current situation is to source semiconductors in time for production. We are now making our semiconductor supply chain resilient by taking the die-form packages and converting them to packaged integrated circuits in India, collaborating with various semiconductor packaging companies.
How was Thotaka affected in these pandemic times, and what were the steps you took to curb the damages while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?
- During the COVID-19 outbreak, as a fabless ODM, we faced lots of challenges,
- The manufacturing capacity of our key international partners has significantly decreased due to social distancing rules and lockdowns.
- Wherever possible, we significantly decreased our dependency on international partners, started using the local ecosystem and shifted our manufacturing and sourcing to our other geography where the pandemic was under control.
- Transportation and distribution systems have been interrupted
- We were continually communicating with our customers and keeping them informed about the situation and possible changes, worked very closely with each customer, and put extra efforts to meet the commitments
- Employee health and safety issues have increased.
- We took all prescribed safety measures,
- Work from home was enabled quickly, enabling all employees with the necessary infrastructure and facilities for the same.
- For those who had to work from the office, all prescribed safety kits were made available, and office space was sensitised from time to time
What would you like to advise the young generation?
Choose to work in your area of interest, make sure your basics are solid and have an attitude of willingness to learn and to adapt to changes.
Where do you envision Thotaka in the long run, and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your respective industry?
We wish to be the #1 ODM in India for electronic products. The Indian semiconductor industry is nascent. We will closely monitor the developments in this industry and take advantage of the progress here and deliver benefits to our customers.
What is the current industrial scenario of the semiconductor industry?
The crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected production and sales to a great extent and, in turn, the growth.
However, we see demand-supply is recovering slowly and hope the situation will get better going forward.
