When Canadian Mechatronics Engineering Grads Alroy Almeida, James Pickard, Jesus A. Zozaya and Nanotechnology Engineering grad Katarina Ilic were working on classroom projects in 2013, they were very frustrated with the slow pace of hardware development. At a time when 3D printing was catching up, they wanted to try and do the same for circuit board development and founded Voltera.
Solving the problem of getting a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) made, they created the ‘Voltera V-One printer’ that prints Circuit Boards directly on the desktop of developers. This they say, helps accelerate development and bring hardware products to the market faster.
Voltera today sells V-One in over 60 countries and has been accelerating development for startups, students, and corporate developers worldwide.
Voltera sees an immense opportunity in the Indian market and is now looking help developers in India bring their products to the global market faster.
“It is evident that with its versatility, great educational institutes, and technological developments there is enormous opportunity for a product like ours to flourish while giving these developers the tools they need to innovate products within the Indian economy. We plan to put a V-One on every developers desk to help them bring their products to the global market faster. The make in India initiative is a great government push to manufacture products in India, we want to be the reason behind a ‘designed in India’ initiative,” Katarina Ilic, co-founder of Voltera says.
Voltera is part of T-Hub’s India Canada bridge program. Katarina says that the Indian market is hard to crack given the diversity of the market and understanding policies, procurement systems, and value perception. It is working with T-Hub to try and penetrate the Indian market and find channel partners.
Its V-One printer in India will be priced at Rs 5 lakh per printer.
“We have been able to find the channel partners we want to work with to help bring the V-One to the Indian market. For a complex product like ours, it is critical to have on the ground service and technical support. I have been looking for a partner in India for a long time now, but it really just came together when I came to visit India with T-hubs guidance. We are excited to build out our distribution network in India with our new partners and T-hub beside us,” Katarina says.