EnCata is an outsourced product development services company. You can get our support in hardware engineering and obtain a full-cycle product development service, such as industrial design, mechanical and electrical engineering, prototyping and design-for-manufacturing.
We know that technical risks and time to market pressure can pose major challenges for entrepreneurs and product managers:
• Iterative testing of product features, prototyping, debugging and updates are critical for finding the right solutions for your new product that meet user expectations.
• Certification and regulations, as well as communication with manufacturers, add uncertainty and complexity.
• The efforts of hiring, development and motivation of the engineering team ties up resources and energy that your company could be using to work with your target customers.
We have put together a team of engineers who are ready to become your technical director and tailor the development process to the business goals of the project or product.
We have worked in industries ranging from IoT products, robots, industrial equipment and digital hardware to consumer electronics and wearable devices. We are aware that every industry has its rules, while also requiring a fresh perspective for each new product. Working with our team gives you the opportunity to view the final result from a new angle. We will share our experience of the different stages of product creation – strategy, idea validation and going into mass production – to help you make essential steps forward within your vision.
One of the most exciting and challenging things you could face is developing a novel product. The go-to-market strategy is fraught with dangers. To control these risks and produce worth that wins the market, numerous strategies are developed.
After providing new product development services for more than 200 clients, we have discovered that it is crucial to understand and communicate the starting point. Following that, you can draft the roadmap for achieving your goal. We like to measure hardware projects by the quality of prototypes. We usually employ TRL methodology for this.
Launching a hardware product requires business skills and engineering expertise. To bring a successful hardware product to market, one has to think through the entire product life-cycle – from idea to market launch. Such competencies are rarely found in a single entrepreneur or even in one company. Our team is strongly focused on business feasibility and design-for-manufacturing. We create designs that have reasonable production costs. You can rely on us at the beginning of the product development process or if you want to update the current product design. You can start to work with us having just a few business concepts (TRL-2) or the 1st simple prototype (proof-of-concept). However, we are not a mass production company. Producing thousands of pieces (TRL-9) is another art that requires other skills, tools and resources.
Product development is teamwork. In order to satisfy consumer expectations, you, as the product leader, should be focused on their needs. However, your attention might be diverted too much by internal misunderstanding. Software developers, procurement managers, designers, and technicians should all be working together.
At EnCata, you can find a well-coordinated team of mechanical and electrical engineers, procurement specialists, and project managers. There is no need to interact with many outsourcers. There's no need to deal with duty transfer.
Only after you finish the project, you can realize the consequences of your decisions made in the beginning of a new product launch. The life-cycle is pretty long to repeat the process several times. Large corporations and serial entrepreneurs have the experience to build several new hardware products.
This knowledge can be applied to all products. Many books are written about the product development life-cycle. Yet, only practice teaches. For this reason, you can use our expertise to increase the success rate and eliminate risks. Working on new product development for more than 10 years has taught us to recognize pitfalls and shortfalls based on the project objectives.
When you develop a product with EnCata, you have the opportunity to view it from a completely different angle and filter out the solutions that will make your product stand out on the market. We have completed more than 350 projects across 20+ different industries. Our experience and insights gained from each and every project allow us to identify industry connections.
EnCata works with both fixed term and agile contracts.
EnCata employs around 30 engineers with Master's and PhD degrees in electrical and industrial design, mechanical engineering, prototyping and manufacturing from European universities. Each employee is an expert in his or her field.
The majority of specialists are of middle or senior levels. Their range of influence is broad enough to encompass the entire new product lifecycle. Our specialists resolve legal and certification difficulties during the concept stage, optimize production costs during the 3D model development process and create necessary documentation for firmware support. Juniors make up only 15% of the team. They constantly upgrade their qualifications under the supervision of seniors.
EnCata is always willing to work with its client. We have everything we need to create a collaborative site. Both parties can work on the project simultaneously. The Customer, for instance, and his/ her team designs the electronics while we work on the enclosure. When teams work together to achieve a fantastic result, it is always a win scenario.
EnCata’s team is always willing to discuss all the necessary details about the project proposed. Our full-fledged team of professionals will interrogate you until both parties are satisfied with the procedures necessary to complete the job.
It certainly can. For any product, EnCata creates a design documentation package and a process documentation package that is suited to the production. It should be noted, however, that the technologists at the customer's chosen plant may make changes or impose their own requirements on the documentation design. EnCata, in turn, makes it easier for the client and the technologist to communicate. EnCata does not mass produce, although it can undertake small-scale production at the request of customers.
Yes. As a highly professional design and engineering firm, we make sure that all discussions with our clients and all information regarding your invention, idea and other proprietary information are kept confidential.
We follow a LEAN approach in product and business development and thus we strongly recommend patent filings only after you are at least part-way through development. This is because patenting is expensive and early patents can already become obsolete or irrelevant later in the development phase. Typically, EnCata's work generates many patentable opportunities for our clients and the best strategy is to file patents at TRL-7, i.e. when early beta prototype is ready and when a startup is ready to start batch production and marketing.There is, however, another strategy, which is to use provisional patents which can be loose and are not to be disclosed to the public for 18 months. These are much less expensive and time consuming, generally costing below $500.
EnCata will always sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement and keep your intellectual property confidential during the development phase and then we can recommend several third-party patent attorneys when the time is right.
Our in-house professionals handle almost all electronics work, including interface design, protocol development, communication design, schematic design, PCB Design, Firmware design and battery management. If the Customer requires a service that Encata does not supply, we have partners that can meet that need.
We certainly do. EnCata employs electronics specialists who deal with low-level firmware. We also have experts on staff who can implement high-level software code.
EnCata employs 12 mechanical and industrial designers and 10 electrical engineers with experience in hardware and firmware. Our team consists of middle and senior level engineers, who have 5+ years of field expertise and have already completed more than 300 projects.
1. Once you have approached us with the project, we conclude the NDA and send the information to the Sales Manager for further evaluation and project planning.
2. The Sales Manager or Sales Engineer will contact you to clarify your goals, requirements and tasks to accomplish. This process is very close to business analysis. When the details are agreed with you, a cost estimate and a quotation are prepared.
3. If you accept the quotation, we will prepare a Technical design specification to document scope of work and requirements and conclude an agreement.
4. After we've signed the agreements, we'll assign you a Project Manager who will gather a project team and report on the project progress.
We do indeed help with fundraising through our large business network. However, we typically recommend startups to our partner VCs after we have done some work for the startup and learned more about the team and their core technology. This feedback and recommendation is of great value to all of the friendly VCs as it saves them much time and effort for due diligence.