Rapid Prototyping and superior T&M skills needed for Hardware Startups!

As India fever gets really going for high evaluation startups,we start wondering that if we are going to see the valuation bubble burst like Dotcom in late 90s.Is there a real development of technology,injection of real equity and is real value creation happening here.? Or there is lot of hype,hot money and Ho hoopla about online marketplace? These are some genuine questions and people with traditional mindset ,who look for RoI and established corporate principles critically look these startups gobbling unlimited money like anything!

Well there is another way we can look at these startups.Most and almost all are software types.Aggregators,Cloud exploiters and virtual world people are entering all sectors-from garments to real estate- and creating daily the companies we call "Unicorns" overnight.No of employees are not important the intellectual capital is.Everybody thinks they need to just go on expanding customer base by investor funds and platform efficiency.The interesting thing is the startups based on the hardware development are missing.Hardly 25-30 companies are involved in hardware compared to overall figure of 4000 or so.

Reason is very easy to spot.Hardware is hard.The ecosystem to support sourcing,components testing and inwards inspection,Rapid prototyping and testing/quality assurance is next to nothing here.Both Chinese tech cities and Taiwan traditionally cater to all analog/digital components and thousands of job shoppers doing subcontracting for any company.No doubt all mass markets of mobile etc are being nurtured by these centers.Contrast this with situation at home where neither testing infrastructure nor the quick protyping can be conveniently done.

For us the better bet will be to get hardware stuff done in China or some other less expensive place and seek customers in India.Design and conceptualisation can happen in India and we can get investors anywhere,for markets near here.Silicon valley Bangalore remains the best bet to us.Startup capital of India will be good for finding T&M infrastructure too,as the demand for rapid prototyping grows overtime.

Hopefully the modest hardware startups will also trigger need of niche T&M companies and their services!