Technology Day: Bengaluru-based company among the winners

A little known Bengaluru-based company is one of the winners of this year's National Technology Day award for supplying a critical technology to Indian Space Research Organisation for which the space agency depended heavily on import till recently.

Hind High Vacuum Company Private Limited bagged the prize for producing top quality base material with three layers of thin film coating to make circuits used in the satellites by the space agency.

The PVC circuits used in television and computers won't work in the harsh environment of space. Special material is required as the substrate on which the circuits are etched.

Till recently ISRO used import almost 90% of its requirement of such material while the remaining 10% was made in-house.

“We now have an order from ISRO to supply 15,000 such thin film circuits per year. We set up a production facility for ISRO and began series production,” Prasanth Sakhamuri, managing director of the company told DH. Each of these one inch by one inch circuit cost Rs 10,000.

The indigenous thin film circuits helped the space agency save crucial foreign exchange.

Hind High Vac is one of the five companies in the category of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises that was awarded by the President Ram Nath Kovind. The award, instituted by the Department of Science and Technology carries a cash prize of Rs 15 lakh. In total 10 companies including three Start-Ups were awarded.

Moving ahead, the space outfit had transferred its 40-micron-line-accuracy technology to the company, which in future would not only make the substrate but also create the entire circuit – based on ISRO design – in which the gap between two lines etched on the substrate would be 40 micron.

With workshare reduced, the scientists at the Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad will focus on the futuristic 10-micron-line-accuracy technology in which the hiatus between the two lines on the circuit would be only 10 micron. As a result, more transistors can be packed onto each circuit, making the satellite more powerful and efficient.

Set up in 1965 as the first company incubated at the Indian Institute of Science, Hind High Vac is a regular supplier of sophisticated instruments to the Department of Atomic Energy, Defence Research and Development Organisation, ISRO and several other R&D institutes.