Perfectly positioned Prodigy (hktdc.com)


	Prodigy Chairman P. Karuna Karan says Hong Kong is fundamental to his company's success

Indian entrepreneur P. Karuna Karan is taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the booming economies of India, China and Hong Kong with promising results. He set up Prodigy Electronics Limited in 2001 specialising in the design, manufacture and distribution of customised embedded electronics products and has never looked back since.

"For the past two to three years, my company's growth has been around 30-40 per cent," said Mr Karuna Karan, who studied electronics design engineering at the University of Madras and worked as consultant with the Indian Defence Research Organisation in Bangalore before joining American firm Avnet, which sent him to Hong Kong to head up its marketing division in 1999.

Now, Prodigy Electronics has its headquarters in Hong Kong, a design centre in Chennai, India, a sales agent in Richmond, US, and "partner companies" for contract manufacturing in Guangzhou, southern China. With its original design manufacturing (ODM) business providing customers' with low-risk technology development, production and delivery in embedded electronics components, Prodigy's Chairman Mr Karuna Karan said he has found a niche segment with not much competition. The company does ODM for small to medium size orders ranging from 500 to 5,000 pieces, and its clientele ranges from SMEs to Fortune 500 companies.

Among his end-customers in India is Mumbai BEST bus company where Prodigy delivered through a local system operator a complete device solution consisting of an automated computer with wireless interface, integrated GPS tracking and contactless smart card readers. In Hong Kong, the company worked as a sub contractor for Australian company ERG to design and manufacture the fare selection units, and accessories for the Octopus smart card reader for City Bus and Kowloon Motor buses. It is also developing custom industrial controllers according to EN115 European safety standards for a large European company based in Spain.

Prodigy is also planning to come up with its own key embedded electronic devices and modules. "One embedded device we are launching is a rugged industrial handheld computer for ticketing applications and public transport usage which runs on Linux and uses the high-end processor ARM9," said Mr Karuna Karan.

Opening doors to China

Hong Kong, he said, is fundamental to the success of Prodigy. "Hong Kong is an important hub and door to China. We have a low cost design centre in India and low cost production in China. The only high costs are the rents in Hong Kong but in the end everything balances out."

The Hong Kong office with its team of eight looks after customer relations, procurement, management of various sub contractors and delivery to worldwide clients. "The local staff are smart, practical and learn on the job quickly," he said. The 13-strong team in the Chennai design centre does the software and design while in China, Prodigy has worked with very good partner companies for the last six years.

"We are successful because of Hong Kong. The city is English speaking, and it has a reliable legal and financial system which makes for safe customer relations. My clients from around the world feel safe in comfortable surroundings when they come here," said Mr Karuna Karan. "Depending on the growth of my company, I certainly see myself staying here for a very long time. I like the free society and the people are open and hard working."

According to Mr Karuna Karan, there are still a lot of untapped opportunities in both Hong Kong and global markets. "We want to increase our market share and expand our presence here. There are not a lot of ODM companies engaged in high-end embedded electronics technology. We bring high value-added technology to Hong Kong."

Mr Karuna Karan was one of the speakers on "ODM of high end embedded electronics" at the recent Inno Design Tech Expo organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Prodigy will also be one of the exhibitors at the upcoming Electronics Fair (April 14-17) to make its presence more visible to both local and overseas buyers.

"We don't necessarily have to expand into specific geographical areas. We're already doing business in various geographies such as Australia, India, Hong Kong, Europe and the Philippines because of our clients. There are so many opportunities worldwide. Take for example Africa and India. There is a lot of interest in high end embedded electronics components for use in smart cards for micro finance projects. If this takes off, it would undoubtedly be very good for our business."