Hello World!

The last few months have been rather fun and busy at Buffer Labs. We moved to Bangalore in November - Finally Launched our site and have a workflow setup that gets us from design to prototype in 2 weeks.

Here are a few things that we noted over the last few months that might help others setting up shop in India:

• Prototyping is an expensive affair in India - If you are a new startup make sure you have adequate budget set aside for whipping out at-least 4 new designs a month.
• Its way easier to deal with PCB fabrication plants that supply proper design rules than dealing with lower cost PCB manufacturers who dont provide design rules.
• It might be cheaper and more time efficient to get your boards done from a manufacturer abroad ( Our current favorite being Seeedstudio ) than to get it done here in India - We had a turn around time of 9 days from submitting the Gerbers online to getting the PCBs with us in Bangalore.
• Its always handy to have a trusted local PCB assembler - Our current turn around time in Bangalore for PCB assembly is 4 days for reasonably complex RF circuits with QFN components.
• Have good support teams for handling your accounts (Read CA on speed dial) and office refreshment needs [ :D ].
• Lastly, friends and family before work - You never know when you might need moral/financial support [ ;) ].

tl;dr : We can make custom hardware designs in roughly 2 weeks and we are damn good at it  [ :D ]