Inside India's Hardware Community with PCB Cupid Founder

Explore India's hardware community with Srinivasan M, founder of PCB Cupid. Explore the vibrant yet fragmented hardware community in India, the challenges of electronics product development, and the mission to create open-source hardware solutions that accelerate innovation.

In this exclusive Control+Listen podcast interview, Srinivasan shares insights into:

• The origins of PCB Cupid and its educational mission
• Challenges in India's electronics and hardware ecosystem
• The importance of open-source hardware and documentation
• Supply chain complexities and opportunities for local manufacturing 

Resources from this Episode:

• PCB Cupid
• Connect with Srinivasan M
• Check out PCB Cupid YouTube channel

Listen to the Episode

Watch the Episode

Key Takeaways

• Open-source hardware accelerates innovation. Reusable, well-documented open-source boards and modules act as “boilerplates,” letting new hardware products be built on top of existing designs instead of from scratch, cutting both development time and cost.
• India’s hardware scene is vibrant but fragmented. There’s a growing maker and hardware ecosystem—with events, open-source projects, and EV/drone startups—but it still lacks a strong central hub to connect knowledge, resources, and communities across the country.
• Local manufacturing is rising, but components are the bottleneck. India is increasingly capable in PCB fabrication and assembly (including complex products like EVs and drones), yet still heavily dependent on imports for semiconductors and passives.
• AI is becoming a practical copilot for hardware design. Tools like ChatGPT and emerging EDA platforms can already help scan datasheets, suggest components, review schematics, and generate firmware boilerplate, significantly reducing grunt work even if they can’t yet fully design production-grade hardware.
• Resilience now matters as much as cost in supply chains. COVID, geopolitical tensions, and distributor disruptions have reinforced that relying on a single country or vendor is risky, driving interest in multiple sources, regional manufacturing (nearshoring/reshoring), and stronger local ecosystems worldwide.

Transcript

James: Hi everyone, welcome to the CTRL+Listen Podcast, brought to you by Octopart. We have a special guest for you today: Srinivasan M, founder of PCB Cupid. Welcome to the show.

Srinivasan: Thank you so much for having me here.

James: Anytime. To get started, can you tell us a little about your background in the industry, what PCB Cupid is, and the story of the company?

Srinivasan: I started out as an electronics engineer and worked for an industrial design studio. We made various products. One of the popular ones was for boAt, an Indian headphone and audio brand. We also worked with customers in the Middle East and Western countries. We built physical products, and my role was mostly building prototypes and helping push those products toward production.

During this process I saw a huge gap, especially in getting components or modules and building prototypes. It was very time-consuming, not because of the building itself, but because of the supply chain and economics around electronics.

The second problem was skills. India is more focused on IT, so if you want to quickly find engineers who can solve electronics problems, it’s harder and quite rare. Only some companies have the resources to pull these people in and build around them.

Initially, I wanted to solve that second problem: either educate people more in electronics or teach electronics directly. That’s how PCB Cupid started. It was just a YouTube channel where we made tutorials about KiCad, EasyEDA, and general electronics topics.

Over time it branched into many things. I got a lot of opportunities—freelancing, working on different projects. During that, I came back to problem number one: the supply chain and economics of components and modules.

I started thinking about the best way to solve this. One strong option was having as many open-source hardware products as possible. Basically, you provide boilerplates for other hardware companies. If they want to build something, they don’t have to start from scratch; they can build on top of existing designs and accelerate the whole hardware product development process.

That’s where the R&D and figuring out what to build began. Slowly, the YouTube channel turned into a small company. We started building development boards, sensor modules, and so on. Currently we have close to 20 different products, and everything is open source. That’s our core model: whatever we make, the hardware is open source, and we try to create excellent documentation around it.

James: That’s fantastic. Could you tell us a bit more about the background of India’s hardware community? I know it’s a unique situation compared to other places.

Srinivasan: Surprisingly, India’s hardware community is very vibrant, but fragmented across the country. We don’t have a strong, central community. For example, in the West, Maker Faire is very popular, and they run events across the world. That ecosystem is strong.

In India, Maker Faire does have events, but we don’t have a very strong ecosystem around hardware, especially open source and the maker community. A lot of it is closed and fragmented into multiple smaller groups.

Recently, though, hardware has become more popular. Many people are building products, and communities are popping up across India. Some of them are very good. We recently had an event called FOSS India. It was supposed to focus on software, but a lot of hardware enthusiasts were there showcasing their products and custom open-source projects.

What I feel we’re missing is a central hub. Once we have knowledge, resources, and experience, if we can pull them into one place, we can bring a lot of people together and build something bigger. That’s the overall goal of starting to build a hardware community around PCB Cupid.

James: That’s fantastic. From your website, it looks like you’ve already made great progress toward building something like that. Can you tell us a bit about the tools on your site and how people can use them?

Srinivasan: Initially, as I mentioned, the focus was education and teaching. When the PCB Cupid website started, it was just a forum. People could ask and answer questions, mainly around KiCad, EasyEDA, and electronics CAD.

Over time it branched into more features. Now we list 80-plus tools that people can search and discover—things useful during electronics design or KiCad workflows.

We also have a Gerber viewer where people can upload Gerber files and view them directly in the browser.

Now we’re building more AI-based tools. The goal is to have a data “block” where people can put in hardware information and eventually generate a nearly finished product. It’s still in the pipeline, but we’re actively working on it.

James: You said you started with forums. What kind of topics can people find there?

Srinivasan: It can be anything from basic electronics to more advanced topics. People can share projects they’ve built and showcase them. Others ask for help on projects they’re working on.

Questions can also cover supply chain, manufacturing, or career guidance. We try to keep everything centered around hardware. The forum is completely community-supported. We don’t have a dedicated internal team answering everything. It’s more like Stack Overflow or similar forums where the community provides answers.

James: That’s great. Very helpful for people starting out or looking for basic knowledge they might not find elsewhere. You also have a learning resources section, which has a lot of information. What can people find there?

Srinivasan: The Learn section started as documentation for the products we build. Beyond that, we converted many of our YouTube tutorials into article-style documents.

One advantage is we can feed all that text into AI and quickly answer questions based on it. Another is that some people prefer reading over watching videos.

So all our tutorials—for example KiCad and EasyEDA—are documented there. If you don’t want to watch the video, you can follow the written guide step by step to get your project done.

James: And then you have an Articles section. Is that different from the Learning section?

Srinivasan: Yes. Articles are more about projects that other people have built. We showcase those projects on our site.

We also highlight interesting electronics news or innovations and post them there. So the Articles section is mostly about new and innovative things happening outside PCB Cupid itself.

James: I want to talk a bit more about your shop. How does it work and what’s featured there?

Srinivasan: The shop is straightforward. We don’t onboard products from other vendors right now; we sell our own products. Our goal is to keep our products 100% open source.

In the future, if we onboard other vendors, we’ll make sure their products are open source, well-documented, and come with schematics and proper support for the end customer. That’s one of our core principles.

Interestingly, our products are among the cheapest in India. If you compare the same specs on other sites, we’ll usually be the lowest price in the country.

There are several reasons. We’ve optimized our supply chain. We spent four to six months figuring out how to reduce the cost of our boards. We found direct supply chains to several vendors, cutting out multiple middlemen. Now there’s only one or two intermediaries at most, so we get components at very good prices.

We also have a strong manufacturing partner for PCBs: a company called Line Circuit. They handle PCB manufacturing, assembly, and the whole production ecosystem. Because we produce in good volumes, we can match prices, make a profit, and still sell cheaper than many competitors.

James: Do you have a couple of examples of components or boards you have available?

Srinivasan: Initially we started with development boards for the ESP32 series. I wanted to design something that wasn’t already in the market, so we began with C3, H2, and C6 variants, even before many of them were widely available.

Unfortunately, that four-to-six-month R&D and cost-optimization period meant that several similar products appeared on the market while we were still refining things.

Our most popular product line is called Glyph—these are our development boards. The best-selling one is Glyph-C6, based on the ESP32-C6.

We also focus on replacing obsolete parts that people still rely on. For example, some I2S microphones are obsolete, but people keep using them because of familiarity and existing support, even though the manufacturer no longer produces them.

We replaced one such mic with the ICS-43434, which is a recommended drop-in by the manufacturer.

Similarly, we replace parts like the MPU-6050 with ICM-series sensors, and so on. Our focus is: open source, availability, and cost. If people adopt our boards, the overall cost of their product should be lower, not higher.

James: Makes sense. That’s a great way to do business.

Coming back to India as a whole: the hardware sector is robust but fragmented. How do you think that’s changed over the last few years, especially with the “Make in India” movement?

Srinivasan: About a decade ago, hardware in India mostly meant importing. People weren’t really building locally, because it was cheaper to import and rebrand.

Now I see people building much more, especially in EVs. With the EV revolution, most EV scooters here are built in India. I think India might be second only to China in terms of EV scooter production.

Beyond end products, companies are specializing in core components. For example, I know companies building BLDC motors entirely in India for drones and automation.

In the drone space, several strong brands now build drones completely in India. They’re not just importing parts and assembling here. They put effort into R&D on the flight controller, ESCs, motors—everything fully manufactured locally.

In the next couple of years, or at least within five years, I think many more industries will start building hardware in India. AI is also accelerating this. People are moving away from traditional software jobs and exploring other fields, and hardware looks very attractive.

James: Definitely. It’s a massive industry.

What role has AI played in this sector’s expansion, and do you see more of that coming?

Srinivasan: AI will definitely help, especially with understanding components. As I mentioned, people often keep using the same obsolete parts just because they’re familiar and don’t want to change.

With AI, you can scan through datasheets quickly instead of reading them manually. That’s a huge advantage.

You can also ask chatbots like ChatGPT to analyze a design. It won’t give you a complete final solution, but you can say, “I want to build X,” and it can suggest a list of components and a rough idea of the circuit.

You can drop in a schematic and ask for a review. It can point out minor inconsistencies or fixes.

If you use open-source tools like KiCad, which store data in text, you can upload your KiCad files and have AI analyze them and give you a reasonably accurate answer.

For firmware, AI is a huge boost too. You don’t have to write the same boilerplate code repeatedly. AI can generate a base structure for all the devices on your board, and you then build your logic on top. It’s a much easier way to start.

James: What’s AI adoption been like in the Indian market? Are people picking it up quickly?

Srinivasan: It depends on the person. In hardware, many engineers have been in the industry for a long time, and some are hesitant to use AI.

But I know people older than me who use AI very efficiently and finish work in days that used to take weeks.

Adoption is very high in software. In hardware it’s slower, because tools are still evolving. For example, PCB tools are quite standardized. Even if you use ChatGPT or similar, it can’t yet draw the entire board for you.

I researched some tools and plugins, and they’re not perfect yet. One interesting company to watch is flux.ai. They’re doing something with AI and EDA tools. It’s a browser-based CAD editor with a Copilot where you can ask questions or ask it to build circuits.

I’m not sure how good it will be for industrial use cases, but for hobbyists and makers it looks promising.

James: Interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.

Last question: most of the world was affected by COVID-era supply chain issues. How do you think India was affected, and how have things changed post-COVID?

Srinivasan: The main issue was components. India is now very capable of building PCBs and doing assembly. We can handle very small components like 0201 and smaller. Some iPhones are now manufactured in India, so on the PCB and assembly side we’re strong.

The challenge is components. We don’t yet have many semiconductor fabs producing high-performance ICs or microcontrollers in India. That might come in the next six to twelve months or a few years, but currently we rely heavily on imports.

Passive components like resistors and capacitors are tricky. They’re commodity parts. There’s not much R&D you can do to differentiate, and it’s tough to compete with brands that have been producing them for decades. Setting up a plant just for that may not make economic sense.

I think it’s better for India to focus on new ICs, microcontrollers, SoCs, and other active components, rather than passives where a lot of R&D has already been done.

On the manufacturing side, though, things are strong. Our products are manufactured at very competitive prices, and we can directly compete with imported products. It’s all about economics and supply chain. If people can connect the right partners and design effectively, local manufacturing is highly possible.

Within five to ten years, we should be able to catch up to a good level.

James: From what I’ve read, COVID was actually beneficial for India in some ways because many countries shifted away from Chinese manufacturing due to instability and moved contracts to India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and others. Manufacturing growth skyrocketed while some other countries declined.

Srinivasan: Yes. Even before COVID there were tensions—like border conflicts between India and China—and some restrictions on parts. That was a critical moment. If you needed something, it wasn’t easy to get it across the border.

We had to look for other suppliers. During that time DigiKey and Mouser were very helpful for getting parts.

But it’s difficult to rely on one partner long term. For example, there was a recent fire incident in LA that affected DigiKey’s supply chain for a while. It was eventually resolved, but it shows why you shouldn’t depend on a single source.

It’s always better to have multiple sources, not just one country or one distributor. If you want reliability and better pricing, more competition and more local options are important. That’s true not just in India but worldwide.

James: Definitely. That was one of the biggest lessons from COVID: companies realized they couldn’t have everything coming from one country anymore.

Srinivasan: Exactly. If you want more reliability in the supply chain and better pricing, you need multiple manufacturing locations and sources. That improves product development and electronics R&D globally.

James: The reshoring and nearshoring movement really picked up during and after COVID. In the US, companies moved manufacturing to Central America, countries like Mexico, so they had something nearby if shipping lines shut down again.

Srinivasan: Yes, and shorter distances reduce delays. You don’t need as many expensive air shipments. Shipping costs go down when your manufacturing locations are closer.

James: Awesome. Last question: if people want to check out your resources, watch your YouTube videos, or keep in touch, what are the best ways to do that?

Srinivasan: The website is still the best option. You can go to the forum, post questions or queries, and we’ll get back to you.

YouTube is also open to everyone. If you’re getting started with electronics or PCB design, that’s a great place to begin.

If you have doubts, you can reach us through the contact form on the website.

James: And the YouTube channel is under the same name, PCB Cupid?

Srinivasan: Yes, it’s PCB Cupid. That was the first thing I did—once I chose the name, I registered it across all platforms.

James: Makes total sense. If people want to look at your products, that’s through the website as well, right?

Srinivasan: Yes. If you’re in India, the website is the best option. We also have a Tindie store for international buyers. They can purchase through Tindie and we’ll ship worldwide.

James: Great to know. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been fantastic chatting with you, and I definitely want to keep in touch and follow your journey.

Srinivasan: Thank you so much, James, for having me here.

James: Anytime. And for anyone listening, come back next time—we’ll have another guest for you.