KOCHI: Bringing an idea to fruition and that too on a big scale shines the spotlight on the hard work put in by the people behind it. And in the case of Delgado Coating and Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, the idea incubated and developed by its director R Sreekumar has landed them their first purchase order from the Defence Bio-Engineering and Electro-Medical Laboratory (DEBEL), DRDO, Ministry of Defence at Bengaluru.
"The purchase order was handed over to us by Ajay Kumar, secretary, Defence Production at the National Deeptech Conclave ‘Hardtech ‘ 19’, organised by Maker Village at Technology Innovation Zone at Kalamassery," he said. According to him, the newly developed 'Advanced Spray Coater' is a machine for the future.
"The DRDO wants it to spray coat the wearables of soldiers with nanoparticles. We don't have any more details about how they plan to use it. Our machine is not an expensive one. In the international market, Ultrasonic Spray Coating machines cost somewhere between Rs 40 lakh to Rs 42 lakh. However, the same technology is being made available by us for a price of Rs 27.5 lakh," he said. We are not gleaning any profit now and are using this opportunity to make people know about our product, he added.
Sreekumar, who is a doctorate degree holder in material science, set up the startup in 2017 after a long ideation period of 10 years. "Since material science has been my doctoral subject I am well-versed in various technologies associated with it. Coating technology was never seen being used in electronic devices. It was usually used in making coloured glass and the technique got stranded in the study level," he said.
When Sreekumar decided to launch a company with an aim to manufacture the device, he didn't have enough funds. "I got a loan of Rs five lakh from Maker Village and another Rs 12 lakh from the Kerala Startup Mission. I raised the remaining amount via crowdfunding and also by mortgaging a portion of my property," he said. Explaining the device, he said, "The technique used in the device is to spray a solvent mixed with the chemicals onto the heated surface of the material which needs to be coated."
"There occurs a chemical reaction which finally coats the material with the targetted metal or element. One of the important advantages of the device developed us is that it can carry out the coating process in an inert atmosphere thereby cancelling oxygen contamination," he said.
According to him, it is also a revolutionary machine that can be used to make thin semiconductor films and transparent conducting oxides. "These transparent conducting oxides are not affected by the heat generated by the sun and hence can be used in solar solar cells as transparent electrodes," he said.
Other applications of the device include touch-screen devices (mobiles), flat panel displays, OLED’s, energy saving smart windows, nano coating, bio-medical coatings over needles and surgical stents. Till date, the company has received orders from Govt Women's College, Thiruvananthapuram, MGU and Cusat. "Vice-Chancellor MGU Sabu Thomas has placed an order for a machine. They need it for their biotechnology lab where they are working on increasing the shelf life of fruits by coating it with organic materials," he said. However, all these orders are not profit-oriented, he added.